Nineteen years and counting in Papua New Guinea

Every Grand Chief deserves a crown

We learned today that two former parliamentarians and a former police commissioner are recipients of the Grand Companion of the Order of Logohu in the 2012 New Year honours list. The award carries with it the title of grand chief. They are Sinai Brown, former member for Gazelle in East New Britain, Sir Akepa Miakwe a former member for Unggai-Bena in Eastern Highlands and former police commissioner and former chief ombudsman Ila Geno.

Now that this special Order of the Grand Chief (Poobah) is growing, we feel it is time to introduce some heraldry and, at very least, a hat.

Having spent some time will milliners, set decorators and museum curators over this, a few possibilities present themselves. We could always follow custom and go with a more secretive, or exclusive, would-be Duk Duk look.

Or we might spare a nod to the Commonwealth, which of course is what these honours are all about.

Certainly some of the copper and nickel mines facilitated by our Poobahs could be asked to contribute. And of course, still on the Commonwealth theme, we might consider a nice fascinator, again with a flora/fauna focus.

But it wouldn't be PNG if we didn't propose something alittle more syncretic---both utterly modern, and completely traditional at the same time.

Quite a few Poobahs of the region have borrowed the kumul feathers of our home to create their own pomp and circumstance.

And there is no dearth of local options.

There is of course a traditional of highlands wear during the Queens Honours.

And yet some of the more wistful possibilities are definitely lowland.

Yes, I know, we all have our favourites. Whom amongst us wouldn't want to see the first and the new Grand Chiefs donned in sulus and great balsa wood headdresses? But in the end, I do believe that simple is elegant, and nothing could be more in keeping with the irony of multiple Grand Chiefs than a beautiful and democratic headdress of the least exclusive order.

Nappy: by a wig and a prayer

Having a think this weekend about the doubling of our government recently. So handy to have two Prime Ministers, two Attorneys General, two Governor Generals. An heir and a spare for each spot. But I think some of us have failed to realise that we haven't yet doubled the kingmaker himself, our Speaker.
 That great bewigged Sinasina figure at the centre of all of this, and the back of the Parliament---Jeffrey Nape. Now some discussions has ensued already on facebook as to the new age of men's style in Parliament---and we take off our natty highlands hats to all of you statesmen in bespoke summer suits (you know who you are) with pastel shirts and bona fide silk ties (let's just say that all those embezzled monies haven't really been squandered). You look fabulous! It is up to you, of course, to merge this new Miami Vice look with the sulu and Pacific shirt standard, but somehow I know you will manage.

My concern now, and I believe it is urgent, is the hair issue. The wig. Now we know that the real emblem of that office is not the big kwila chair that seerms to encase Mr Nape like a womb, nor the gavel or lovely long robes. Asked personally about the gorgeous white locks and whether his promotion to GG will force him to set these aside, we were told the hirsuite adornment is a permanent feature of Parliament and cannot leave the floor, not for a night at the clubs, not for role playing in the Speaker's quarters upstairs, not for a nits wash in the state laundry. It is, we understand, a fixture.

What I propose is that we not so much duplicate the position of Speaker, but that we provide for the Speaker a small selection of alternate 'looks' he might sport for question sessions on the floor, or for those more humid days when Air Arnold Ahmet threatens to turn off the air con in the big house.

At risk of sounding disrespectful, I have reviewed some of the more popular options, including the currently trending long beaded extensions look favoured by every middle class highlands girl under 3 feet tall---and come up with a handful of possisbilities. Plese feel free, dear readers, to add your own.

Do let us try to keep in mind that it is the dignity of the office that comes first in this peaceful coup. By all means.

All Hail the Siggy State

PNG is no Nanny State. It is a minimal state, or what some refer to as a Night Watchman State, meaning the state is barely responsible for people’s safety, but not much more.

Wikipedia tells us:

Advocacy of a night watchman state is known as minarchism. Minarchists argue that the state has no right to use its monopoly on the use of force to interfere with free transactions between people, and see the state's sole responsibility as ensuring that transactions between private individuals are free.

Well, maybe not free exactly. The price of doing business in PNG is having to pay all the costs of government services yourself, with everything from school fees to health expenses and death benefits. When a tribal fight erupts employers all across PNG mobilize their Christmas funds and tea budgets to loan employees part of what they are expected to contribute in compensation, which in turn covers the funeral costs, repatriated bodies and relatives, palettes of beer and later school fees and small business loans to clansmen at home. The cost of entrepreneurship can include everything from establishing a power source to creating housing, transport, water supply, schools, aid posts and markets for staff and their families. You may need to carve out transport to market where there isn’t one, or invest in the ‘public’ shipping or postal services to be sure they operate reliably.

But for those in public office, the cost of doing business is free, absolutely without cost, and almost, we might say, profit-bearing. The State of China builds Sir Michael a castle in Wewak, and his son diverts between 75 and 75 million kina of MVIL funds into a newly-established investment firm down south. A certain member for Maprik insists subcontractors in his SABLs kick back 50% as the price of doing business, and squanders how many million in a Casino Hotel that will never be opened?

But it’s a game of carrot and stick. The latest news is that the Somare government released K136 million ($A54 million) in a single day last year to muster political support to fight off a vote of no confidence challenge. This was money earmarked for the district support improvement program (DSIP) and provincial support improvement program (PSIP). Sam Basil told the Speaker that,

“A total K178 million was budgeted and released in 2010. Mr Speaker, it may amaze you to know that 75 per cent of these funds, or K136 million, was released all on one day – the 22nd July, 2010. On the very same day, 14 provinces and 55 districts each received K2 million in return for their support of the previous government during a motion of no confidence by the then Opposition,” he said.

“Let me add, Mr Speaker, that then Opposition MPs of which I was a part had to wait for months for the release of this K2 million.”

 

In the Night Watchman State that is PNG, none of that money is traced or acquitted or made known to the constituents of these provinces and districts who continue to bear the cost of absent or dilapidated public services. As teachers stray from remote schools to banks in town to get their pays (because district treasuries have yet to evolve), and another year of students are left without education; as wonky housing drains the base hospitals of all qualified staff; as training programs for midwives and APOs fail to eventuate, while cholera rages through a district and strain church benevolence systems to exhaustion…aid organizations and volunteers provide again this year what they had to provide last year, and in so doing are stymied from investing in next level development…as more humble public servants become real estate barons and diversified investors, with glass and chrome office buildings and new strip malls and beach houses in Cairns.

I propose that a new term be coined for this state of neglect and self-service. Not a night watchman at all, but really a Siggy State---in the real sense of that siggy who used to slep on a broken chair by the front gate, the one in coveralls and a Duna day wig who carries a muruk bone for personal protection.

I further propose a way we can all enjoy this Siggy State to the fullest, but following its antics like a telenovela or an updated Lapun Kuri, maybe a serial sitcom for EMTV. Now, I have long considered writing a pilot for a new PNG serial, and many different formats have come to mind. There are the obvious Fawlty Towers in a bush lodge, and wonderful reality shows (Jersey Shore a la Mt Hagen?),

perhaps Fear Factor in the bush, or a version of Survivor for your village Uncle who finds himself in Moresby. Maybe Neighbours (with homemade firearms), or the classic Are You being Served? (because frankly I don’t care and Im on the phone anyway---can’t you see?),

and of course AbFab which would be rendered anew in the PVA penthouse with MPs and long stemmed glasses (you know who you are). Gilligan’s Island---on Karkar? I have even considered a Jr Masterchef PNG program, with all the core ingredients: sago grubs and wallabies and eels and beautifully decorated coconut rice balls.

The Home Shopping Network (with jewelry)?

Dancing with the Stars?

PNG's Next Top Model?

But this brings us back to a Siggy State series. Consider a Twist on The Nanny, something called Not a Nanny State-- featuring a comely house girl from the Solomon Islands who falls in love with the boss and marries him in a grand State Wedding.

 

Or something more picaresque, in the spirit of Tin Pis Run.

The Wonderful World of Siggy.

Of course the pilot would be on the cheap, we could just used CCTVs and night vision glasses to reveal after dark activity in Port Moresby streets. Enter the lovable scamp, Dobigi, after a siggy in Mt Hagen from years ago who failed to protect me from rascals literally chopping through the wall of my house, as he was found undisturbed at 2 am on the small rise of the front lawn, spread eagle, bow in one hand, arrows in another, blue coveralls unbuttoned, knit cap askew, fast asleep and snoring.

Our lovable hero gets employed by a mining company, takes on the challenges of angry landowners, finds love in a lineup of innocent teenagers, colludes with the Chinese owners and a favourite politician to confine rabble rousers in shipping containers—periodically traveling home to the lovable wife and kids who unknowingly contract HIV and can’t seem to understand their failing health. Episodes would include tambus who roll PMVs, default on loans, get chased by bank managers and other creditors, flee girlfriends and accumulate wives. Meanwhile a kooky Malaysian timber baron in round glasses will convince well-meaning  Dobigi that the landowners of his lucrative SABL being clear-felled for oil palm have all formed a consensus and that those crazy individuals screaming with banners outside the chainlink are just activists under the influence of foreign agendas.

In an updated version of the hackneyed yarn about highlanders checking for genitals under the first aircraft, Dobigi would not see the forest for all the trees being shipped overseas, and the slight raise in his pay packet (or the cheap Chinese boom box the company gets him for Christmas) as he releases gas canisters on those crazy activists. And in the close of one season’s drama he can be seen boarding the Rainbow Warrior and asking the captain what the fares are to and from Kimbe.

Of course we all know where the series will go in a few seasons. Dobigi our beloved Siggy will himself become a security consultant with an overseas bank account, and a pass key to the Cairns Casino, while still making occasional junkets back home to the bush house where his faithful wife Betty raises a phalanx of little Dobigis as she slowly grows weakened by a series of ambiguous health complaints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ramu Nico Parent company MCC barred from World Bank contracts for fraud and corruption

World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms & Individuals

 Fraud and Corruption

The firms and individuals listed on Table 1 below are ineligible to be awarded a World Bank-financed contract for the periods indicated because they have been sanctioned under the Bank's fraud and corruption policy as set forth in theProcurement Guidelines or the Consultant Guidelines. Such sanction was imposed as the result of:

(1) an administrative process conducted by the Bank that permitted the accused firms and individuals to respond to the allegations. Through July 2007, this process was conducted in accordance with the Sanctions Committee Procedures adopted on August 2, 2001. Since then, the process has been conducted in accordance with the Sanctions Procedures of the World Bank Group Sanctions Board. To get more information on the two-tier sanctions process go to Sanctions Management webpage.

OR

(2) cross-debarment in accordance with the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions dated 9 April 2010, which, as of July 1, 2011, has been made effective by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Inter-American Development Bank.

Unless otherwise indicated below, in the case of a firm debarred by the World Bank in the first instance, ineligibility extends to any firm or individual which the debarred firm directly or indirectly controls; and in the case of a debarred individual, ineligibility extends to any firm which the debarred individual directly or indirectly controls.

Click here to see additional notes on debarred firms and individuals and here to see an explanatory note on the application of cross-debarment.

The Bank may also apply other actions to firms & individuals tat do not result in debarrment. For the current list, see Table 2: Other Actions. 

To report allegations of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed projects, please contact the Integrity Vice Presidency.

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Table 1: Debarred & Cross-Debarred Firms & Individuals

Firm Name	Address	Country	Ineligibility Period		Grounds
			From	To
CHINA FIRST METALLURGICAL CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION (CFMCC) *57	NO. 3,  INDUSTRY  AVENUE,  QINGSHAN  DISTRICT,  WUHAN, HUBEI,  430081	China	26-SEP-2011	25-SEP-2014	Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii)

World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms & Individuals           Available in: Español      Fraud and Corruption  This List is Current The firms and individuals listed on Table 1 below are ineligible to be awarded a World Bank-financed contract for the periods indicated because they have been sanctioned under the Bank's fraud and corruption policy as set forth in theProcurement Guidelines or the Consultant Guidelines. Such sanction was imposed as the result of: (1) an administrative process conducted by the Bank that permitted the accused firms and individuals to respond to the allegations. Through July 2007, this process was conducted in accordance with the Sanctions Committee Procedures adopted on August 2, 2001. Since then, the process has been conducted in accordance with the Sanctions Procedures of the World Bank Group Sanctions Board. To get more information on the two-tier sanctions process go to Sanctions Management webpage. OR (2) cross-debarment in accordance with the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions dated 9 April 2010, which, as of July 1, 2011, has been made effective by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Inter-American Development Bank. Unless otherwise indicated below, in the case of a firm debarred by the World Bank in the first instance, ineligibility extends to any firm or individual which the debarred firm directly or indirectly controls; and in the case of a debarred individual, ineligibility extends to any firm which the debarred individual directly or indirectly controls. Click here to see additional notes on debarred firms and individuals and here to see an explanatory note on the application of cross-debarment. The Bank may also apply other actions to firms & individuals tat do not result in debarrment. For the current list, see Table 2: Other Actions.  To report allegations of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed projects, please contact the Integrity Vice Presidency. Table 1: Debarred & Cross-Debarred Firms & Individuals       Top of Form   Debarred Firms and Individuals   Name:   Country: AllAlbaniaArgentinaAustraliaBangladeshBelgiumBoliviaBulgariaBurkina FasoCambodiaCanadaChinaCongo, Democratic Republic ofCongo, Republic ofCyprusEgypt, Arab Republic ofFranceGermanyGhanaGreeceIndiaIndonesiaIraqIrelandItalyJapanKenyaKorea, Republic ofMexicoMoldovaMongoliaMozambiqueNetherlandsNicaraguaNigeriaNorwayPhilippinesRussian FederationSingaporeSouth AfricaSri LankaSwedenTajikistanTanzaniaThailandTogoTurkeyUgandaUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomUnited StatesUzbekistanVietnamWest Bank and GazaZimbabwe     Firm Name Address Country Ineligibility Period Grounds From To CHINA FIRST METALLURGICAL CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION (CFMCC) *57 NO. 3,  INDUSTRY  AVENUE,  QINGSHAN  DISTRICT,  WUHAN, HUBEI,  430081 China 26-SEP-2011 25-SEP-2014 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) CHINA FIRST METALLURGICAL GROUP CO., LTD. *57 NO. 3,  INDUSTRY  AVENUE,  QINGSHAN  DISTRICT,  WUHAN, HUBEI,  430081 China 26-SEP-2011 25-SEP-2014 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) ZHEJIANG ZHEDA INSIGMA GROUP CO. LTD. (INSIGMA GROUP) 212 WENER ROAD, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG 310007 China 15-SEP-2011 11-AUG-2014 Cross Debarment: EBRD ZHEJIANG ZHEDA INSIGMA TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD. NO. 226  TIANMUSHAN  ROAD, 12F, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG 310007 China 15-SEP-2011 11-AUG-2014 Cross Debarment: EBRD ZHONGKE LIFE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. *40 NO. 88,  ZHIYUAN ROAD,  WUKANG TOWN,  DEQING COUNTY, ZHEJIANG 313200 China 26-JUL-2011 25-JUL-2014 Procurement Guidelines 1.14(a)(ii) HEFEI HIGHWAY & BRIDGE PROJECT CO. LTD. *37 NO. 199, BLOCK  B, HAOZHOU  ROAD, HEFEI  CITY, ANHUI  PROVINCE China 28-JUN-2011 27-JUN-2013 Procurement Guidelines 1.14(a)(ii) MR. YANG LIN * 30 C/O SUITE 617  EAST PLAZA,  NO. 15 NORTH  ROAD, WEST 4TH  RING ROAD, HAI  DIAN DISTRICT, 100195, BEIJING China 11-MAY-2011 10-MAY-2014 Procurement Guidelines 1.14(a)(ii) DAQING OILFIELD HIGHWAY & BRIDGE ENGINEERING CO., LTD. NO. 19, XIJING  ROAD, RANGHULU  DISTRICT, DAQING CITY China 07-MAR-2011 19-NOV-2017 Cross Debarment: ADB CHINA COMMUNICATIONS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY LIMITED, as the successor or assign to China Road and Bridge Corporation *21 NO. 85,  DESHENGMENWAI  STREET,  BEIJING 10008 China 12-JAN-2009 12-JAN-2017 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) CHINA GEO-ENGINEERING CORPORATION *20 NO. 45B  XIWUDAOKOU,  HAIDIAN  DISTRICT, POST  CODE 100080, BEIJING China 12-JAN-2009 12-JAN-2014 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) CHINA STATE CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING CORPORATION (CSCEC) *22 N/A, BEIJING China 12-JAN-2009 12-JAN-2015 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) CHINA WUYI CO. LTD *23   China 12-JAN-2009 12-JAN-2015 Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii) Bottom of Form Notes on Debarred Firms & Individuals         Several firms above are marked with an asterisk (*). The explanations for these are as follows:   *1  The period of ineligibility of the sanctioned firm extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. *2  The period of ineligibility of Eksen Proje İnşaat Turizm Ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi ("Eksen") extends to any organization directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm.  The period of ineligibility of Eksen may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, Eksen has taken appropriate steps to cooperate with the World Bank and if Eksen has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *3  The period of ineligibility of ELKRI Sh.p.k. extends to any organization directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of ELKRI Sh.p.k. may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, ELKRI Sh.p.k. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *4  The period of ineligibility of Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises Limited  extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises Limited may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises Limited has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *5  The period of ineligibility of Chemito Technologies Pvt. Ltd.  extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of Chemito Technologies Pvt. Ltd. may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, Chemito Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *6  The period of ineligibility of Global Spin-Weave Limited extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of Global Spin-Weave Limited may be reduced by up to one year if, after four years of ineligibility, Global Spin-Weave Limited has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *7  The ineligibility of RINIA SK Sh.p.k. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of RINIA SK Sh.p.k. may be reduced by up to one year if, after one year of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that RINIA SK Sh.p.k. has taken appropriate steps to cooperate with the World Bank, has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *8  The ineligibility of DEA DHV Sh.p.k. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of DEA DHV Sh.p.k. may be reduced by up to one year if, after one year of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that DEA DHV Sh.p.k. has taken appropriate steps to cooperate with the World Bank, has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *9  The ineligibility of Macmillan Limited extends to its subsidiaries.  The period of ineligibility may, under certain circumstances, be reduced by up to three years based on cooperation with the World Bank Group and the development and implementation of an effective corporate compliance program. *10  The period of ineligibility of Glocoms, Inc. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the eight-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of eight years, Glocoms, Inc. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *11  The period of ineligibility of Maurence Anguh extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls, including but not limited to The Glocoms Group, Inc., Global Technology Solutions, Inc. and Glosolve Limited.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the eight-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of eight years, Maurence Anguh may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *12  Last name also spelled "Sarker." *13  The period of ineligibility for both Royal Mekong Construction & Development Pte., Ltd. (“Royal Mekong”) and Heng Rathpiseth (“Mr. Heng”) will be extended by one year if the Sanctions Board determines that Royal Mekong and Mr. Heng have failed to promptly put in place within Royal Mekong an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and to implement this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *14  The period of ineligibility of Videocon Industries Limited extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of Videocon Industries Limited may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that Videocon Industries Limited has taken appropriate steps to cooperate with the World Bank, has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank, and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *15  The period of ineligibility of OREDAR extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by the sanctioned firm. The period of ineligibility of OREDAR may be reduced by up to one year if, after one year of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that OREDAR has put in place a corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *16  The period of ineligibility of any firm directly or indirectly controlled by Ms. Natalia Yasko may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that such firm has put in place a corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *17  The period of ineligibility of UCII may be reduced by up to one year if, after one year of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that UCII has put in place a corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *18  The ineligibility of C.M. Pancho Construction Inc. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by C.M. Pancho Construction Inc. The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after two years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that C.M. Pancho Construction Inc. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *19  The ineligibility of Cavite Ideal International Construction and Development Corp. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by Cavite Ideal International Construction and Development Corp. The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after two years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that Cavite Ideal International Construction and Development Corp. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *20  The ineligibility of China Geo-Engineering Corporation extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by China Geo-Engineering Corporation. The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after three years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that China Geo-Engineering Corporation has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *21  Pursuant to Section 9.05 of the Sanctions Procedures, the ineligibility of China Road and Bridge Corp. applies to China Communications Construction Company Limited as the successor or assign of China Road and Bridge Corp., in respect of contracts under a World Bank Group-financed or -executed project related to roads and bridges and extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by China Communications Construction Company Limited in respect of such contracts.  The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to three years if, after five years from the date of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that China Communications Construction Company Limited has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *22  The ineligibility of China State Construction Engineering Corp. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by China State Construction Engineering Corp. The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after four years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that China State Construction Engineering Corp. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *23  The ineligibility of China Wu Yi Co. Ltd. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by China Wu Yi Co. Ltd. The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after four years of ineligibility, the Sanctions Board determines that China Wu Yi Co. Ltd. has put in place an effective corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the World Bank. *24  The ineligibility of E.C. de Luna Construction Corp. extends to any firm directly or indirectly controlled by E.C. de Luna Construction Corp. *25  The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to two years if, after two years of ineligibility, Dongsung Construction Co. Ltd. has put in place a corporate compliance program acceptable to the World Bank. *27  The period of ineligibility extends to any successor in interest or assignee, unless otherwise agreed upon in writing. Upon expiration of the minimum period of ineligibility, Lotti will be eligible for release if to the satisfaction of the WBG, it: has developed and implemented an effectice corporate compliance program; has paid restitution for unjustified payments received; and has cooperated with the WBG. *28  The period of ineligibility extends to any successors or assigns. Upon expiration of the minimum period of ineligibility, PT. Lenggogeni will be eligible for release if to the satisfaction of the WBG, it: has developed and implemented an effective corporate compliance program; and has cooperated with the WBG. *29  The period of ineligibility extends to any successors or assigns. Upon expiration of the minimum period of ineligibility, the firm will be eligible for release if to the satisfaction of the WBG, it: has developed and implemented an effective corporate compliance program; and has cooperated with the WBG. *30  The period of ineligibility of Yang Lin extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Yang Lin may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *31  The period of ineligibility of Association Muhandison extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Association Muhandison may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *32  The period of ineligibility of LLC UN&Co extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, LLC UN&Co may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *33  The period of ineligibility of Sego Ventures Nigeria Limited extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Sego Ventures Nigeria Limited may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *34  The period of ineligibility of Lasservice NV extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Lasservice NV may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *35  The period of ineligibility of Joseph Nuijten extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Joseph Nuijten may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *36  The period of ineligibility of Proveeduría Médica S.R.L. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Proveeduría Médica S.R.L. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *37  The period of ineligibility of Hefei Highway & Bridge Project Co. Ltd. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Hefei Highway & Bridge Project Co. Ltd. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *38  The period of ineligibility of Dr. Symplice Mbola Mbassi extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Dr. Symplice Mbola Mbassi may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *39  The period of ineligibility of Cabinet de Recherche, de Formation et d’Expertise en Santé extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Cabinet de Recherche, de Formation et d’Expertise en Santé may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *40  The period of ineligibility of Zhongke Life Science & Technology Co., Ltd. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Zhongke Life Science & Technology Co., Ltd. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *41 The period of ineligibility of Marvel SAS extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Marvel SAS may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. Marvel SAS was formerly known as Marvel SA and is also known as Société Marvel SA and Marvel Novedi in Bank records. *42  The period of ineligibility of K.M. Rahman extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, K.M. Rahman may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *43  The period of ineligibility of Human Resources Development Organization (HURDO) extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is three years; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Human Resources Development Organization (HURDO) may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, for so long as Human Resources Development Organization (HURDO) remains a legal entity that Mr. Md. Shamsul Alam directly or indirectly controls, Human Resources Development Organization (HURDO) is subject to the sanction (including the minimum period of ineligibility of four years indicated in the posting above) imposed on Mr. Md. Shamsul Alam, pursuant to Section 9.04 of the World Bank Sanctions Procedures. *44  The period of ineligibility of Samajik Sangha (SS) extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Samajik Sangha (SS) may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *45  The period of ineligibility of Mr. Md. Shamsul Alam extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Mr. Md. Shamsul Alam may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *46  The period of ineligibility of Greg Ilias Lee, also known as Greg Lee, extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Greg Ilias Lee or Greg Lee may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with integrity compliance conditions. * 47  The period of ineligibility of Dr. Hans Peter Schöne extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Dr. Hans Peter Schöne may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.  * 48 The period of ineligibility of Mrs. Shamsunnahar extends to any legal entity that she directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Mrs. Shamsunnahar may be released from ineligibility only if she has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that she has complied with the following conditions: (a) she has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which she has been sanctioned; (b) she has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that she directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *49 The period of ineligibility of Development Action Centre (DAC) extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Development Action Centre (DAC) may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *50 The period of ineligibility of Telecomunicaciones y Sistemas S.A. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Telecomunicaciones y Sistemas S.A. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *51 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Sealtiel Orozco extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Mr. Sealtiel Orozco may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *52 The period of ineligibility of Asmontage EOOD extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the seven-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of seven years, Asmontage EOOD may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *53 The period of ineligibility of Md. Abdur Razzak extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Md. Abdur Razzak may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *54 The period of ineligibility of Bittohin Chasi Somaj Kallyan Sangstha (BCSKS) extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Bittohin Chasi Somaj Kallyan Sangstha (BCSKS) may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *55 The period of ineligibility of TIS Consultants Company Limited extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the seven-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of seven years, TIS Consultants Company Limited may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *56 The period of ineligibility of Supachai Prechaterasat extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the seven-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of seven years, Supachai Prechaterasat may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *57 The period of ineligibility of China First Metallurgical Construction Corporation, also known as China First Metallurgical Group Co., Ltd., extends to any organization it directly or indirectly controls. *58 The period of ineligibility of Öztaş İnşaat, İnşaat Malzemeleri Ticaret Anonim Şirketi (“Öztaş”) extends to any organization it directly or indirectly controls.  The period of ineligibility may be reduced by up to one year if, after two years, Öztaş has implemented an effective corporate compliance program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *59 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Alex Opua extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Mr. Alex Opua may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *60 The period of ineligibility of Ayemo Investments Limited extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Ayemo Investments Limited may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *61 The period of ineligibility of Social and Environmental Development Joint Stock Company extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Social and Environmental Development Joint Stock Company may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *62 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Nguyen Xuan Doan extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Doan may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *63 The period of ineligibility of Constructora Extracon extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the 29 months as indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period, Constructora Extracon may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *64 The period of ineligibility of Servicios Industriales en Construccion de Metalmecanica y Petroleras "SICOMETP" extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the 29 months as indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period, SICOMETP may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *65 The period of ineligibility of Constructora Citeco extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the 29 months as indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period, Constructora Citeco may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *66 The period of ineligibility of Mr. John B. Katende extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the six-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of six years, Mr. John B. Katende may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *67 The period of ineligibility of Broadway Engineering Services Limited extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the six-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of six years, Broadway Engineering Services Limited may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *68 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Roman Nicu extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Mr. Roman Nicu may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *69 The period of ineligibility of Intreprinderea Mixta Moldo-Irlandeza "Romany Gaz Group" S.R.L. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Intreprinderea Mixta Moldo-Irlandeza "Romany Gaz Group" S.R.L. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *70 The period of ineligibility of Vratsa Invest Group OOD extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is eight years; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of eight years, Vratsa Invest Group OOD may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *71 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Valeri Angelov extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the eight-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of eight years, Mr. Valeri Angelov may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *72 The period of ineligibility of Metal Engineering EOOD extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is four years; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, Metal Engineering EOOD may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, for so long as Metal Engineering EOOD remains a legal entity that Mr. Valeri Angelov directly or indirectly controls, Metal Engineering EOOD is subject to the sanction (including the minimum period of ineligibility of eight years indicated in the posting above) imposed on Mr. Valeri Angelov, pursuant to Section 9.04 of the World Bank Sanctions Procedures.      *73 The period of ineligibility of Closed Joint Stock Co "Sharora" extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Closed Joint Stock Co "Sharora" may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *74 The period of ineligibility of Association "Hidrostroitel" extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, Association "Hidrostroitel" may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *75 The period of ineligibility of IG-TOGO Sarl extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, IG-TOGO Sarl may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank.   *76 This debarment action is part of a negotiated resolution agreement which is imposed on The Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administration Limited and 23 of its affiliates.   *77 The minimum period of ineligibility is the eighteen-month period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility, J. Mitra and Co. Pvt. Ltd. may be released from ineligibility only if it has cooperated with the World Bank, paid restitution and made a contribution-in-kind to the Government of India, and demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *78 The period of ineligibility of UralKotloService PKF ZAO extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, UralKotloService PKF ZAO may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *79 The period of ineligibility of UralKotloService PKF ZAO (Tambov) extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the four-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of four years, UralKotloService PKF ZAO (Tambov) may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. Notwithstanding the foregoing, for so long as UralKotloService PKF ZAO (Tambov) remains a legal entity that Mr. Dmitry Gennadyevich Kostousov directly or indirectly controls, UralKotloService PKF ZAO (Tambov) is subject to the sanction (including the minimum period of ineligibility of seven years indicated in the posting above) imposed on Mr. Dmitry Gennadyevich Kostousov, pursuant to Section 9.04 of the World Bank Sanctions Procedures. *80 The period of ineligibility of Al-Sami Co. Group for General Contracts Ltd. extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the five-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of five years, Al-Sami Co. Group for General Contracts Ltd. may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *81 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Dmitry Gennadyevich Kostousov extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the seven-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of seven years, Mr. Dmitry Gennadyevich Kostousov may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *82 The period of ineligibility of Mr. Allan Makabayi extends to any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls.  The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Mr. Allan Makabayi may be released from ineligibility only if he has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that he has complied with the following conditions: (a) he has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which he has been sanctioned; (b) he has completed training and/or other educational programs that demonstrate a continuing commitment to personal integrity and business ethics; and (c) any legal entity that he directly or indirectly controls has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *83 The period of ineligibility of Babcon Uganda Limited extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the two-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of two years, Babcon Uganda Limited may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. *84  The period of ineligibility of PT Amythas Experts & Associates extends to any legal entity that it directly or indirectly controls. The minimum period of ineligibility is the three-year period indicated in the posting above; provided, however, that after this minimum period of ineligibility of three years, PT Amythas Experts & Associates may be released from ineligibility only if it has demonstrated to the World Bank Group's Integrity Compliance Officer that it has complied with the following conditions: (a) it has taken appropriate remedial measures to address the sanctionable practices for which it has been sanctioned; and (b) it has put in place an effective integrity compliance program acceptable to the Bank and has implemented this program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank. Cross-debarred Entities  Cross-debarment applies to: (a) all projects subject to the May 2010 or later dated revisions to the Procurement Guidelines and Consultant Guidelines; and  (b) to all projects subject to earlier editions of the Procurement Guidelines and Consultant Guidelines for which the legal agreements have been amended to give effect to the cross-debarment regime, with the exception of projects in the following countries for which such amendments have not taken effect:   (1) Federative Republic of Brazil (not including States and other financing recipients in Brazil);   (2) Bulgaria;   (3) State of Eritrea;   (4) Republic of Kazakhstan (not including Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating company - KEGOC);   (5) Republic of Kenya;   (6) Serbia. Cross-debarred entities are indicated on Table 1: Debarred and Cross-debarred firms and individuals, above.     Table 2: Other Sanctions   This List is Current  Name of Firm & Address  Date of Imposition of Sanction  Sanction Imposed  Grounds Progynist *1 P.O. Box 40239 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 9, 2011 Conditional Non-debarment and Letter of Reprimand Consultant Guidelines 1.22(a)(ii) Yachiyo Engineering Co. Ltd. *2 April 25, 2011 -Jan. 25, 2012 Letter of Reprimand Consultant Guidelines, 1.25(a)(ii) Irrimaquinas Irrigacao E Maquinas (A.L.B. Fernandes Comercio) *3 TRAV. LITORANEA, NO. 1/B - SAO FRANCISCO - CEP 65.076.170 SAO LUIS, MARANHAO BRAZIL July 7, 2011 - July 6, 2014 Conditional Non-debarment Procurement Guidelines 1.15(a)(ii)   Click here for the full text of the Sanctions Committee Procedures. Click here for the full text of the Sanctions Procedures of the World Bank Group Sanctions Board.                           © 2011 The World Bank Group, All Rights Reserved. Legal

Why Iceland Should Be in the News But Is Not

By Deena Stryker

 Sacsis.org    
Sunday, November 06, 2011

An Italian radio program’s story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion. As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why: Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy. Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain. Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens. Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back. What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum. Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.) In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country. But Icelanders didn’t stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.) To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections. Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat. They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign. That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

Let's ride the wave of sustainism

By  Michiel Schwarz

Nothing less than a radical change in economic thinking is needed in our quest for an “inclusive and sustainable economics”. In fact, what is rightly called for is a paradigm shift indeed. But not just in economic terms. “Sustainism”—as Joost Elffers and I have termed it in our Sustainist Manifesto that was published in New York earlier this year [i]—captures the new paradigm. It’s the name of the emerging culture of the 21st century. Whilst sustainism has some of its roots in the sustainability movement, it goes well beyond purely ecological concerns: it is where connectivity, localism, globalization and sustainability interact. Sustainist culture, as successor to last century’s modernism, will come to shape our collective perceptions of wellbeing and how we wish to design our living environment. Economics is part of culture, not the other way around. Those concerned with growth and sustainable economic models often loose sight of the fact that wellbeing, and indeed economics, ultimately depends on what people and societies value, what they see as desirable, and how they perceive the future. In other words: culture. What is needed is a reassessment of the cultural framework in which issues of economics and growth are being cast. The fact that such a “cultural shift” in perspective is already underway is a hopeful development. It is present in what Paul Hawken calls “the largest movement in the world”—the one million plus non-profit groups involved in ecological issues, social justice and sustainable development. If sustainability is the movement, sustainism is the culture that will make it possible. Values are at the core of any culture. Today, new values are emerging. Concepts such as time, information, community, and creativity are becoming valued resources, socially as well as economically (as Juliet Schor has argued eloquently in her book Plenitudes). Meanwhile, we see a new set of “sustainist qualities” that is arising, such as sharing, being connected, place-based experiences, ecologically and socially responsible living, and human scale in development. In the next decades—I contend—sustainism will become the new operating context for redefining our economic models and our strategies for change. The rise of “ethonomics” has been one way to signify the shift in economic orientation in sustainist culture. We’re just beginning to reimagine what an economics of sharing, connecting, collaboration and openness could look like. An ethical economics, based on—yet to be operationalized—sustainist values should be placed at the center of the debate. Seen through the “lens” of sustainism, our need to incorporate new values and qualities into our models is being exposed. At the heart of a “sustainist economics” should be concerns such as eco-equity, social and ecological responsibility, commons thinking, open exchange, inclusive design, appropriate scale, and local meanings. Let’s ride the cultural wave of sustainism, as we refocus our agendas and our strategies. [i] Schwarz, Michiel, and Joost Elffers. (2011). Sustainism Is the New Modernism: A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era. New York: DAP Distributed Art Publishers: www.sustainism.com.

Bodybuilding trolls and the big breasted boys who love them

We are pleased to find this past week mark the fusion of three favourite things: Trolling, as in fishing for suckers; bodybuilding, as in male glamour for suckers; and facebook, social life for suckers.

Given my own genetic proximity to leprechauns and other things that live below bridges, I am not here to throw stones are the sub-race of trolls, but rather to point out that with all the merchandise dedicated to them in novelty stores everywhere, you would think they had very little time left for internet entertainment.

So those of us who like to play with happy dolls on the internet, are a little surprised to find the new breed of testosterone infused trolls acting like bullies.

Not that we haven’t seen their likes before. Small heads, big chests. Lots of emphasis on breasts and body oil. Posing. Shrunken gonads.

And in their pinheadedness, despite their claims,  they seem to have forgotten to take  pseudonyms. Which leaves us the pleasure of naming them. Transgender trolls? Boys with girl issues?

 

 

Papua New Guinea Post-Courier

The Drum 16.11.11

UPNG breeding psycopaths?

SEEMS the three UPNG students caught abusing and threatening folk on Facebook attracted sympathy in some quarters? But the sympathisers would surely have to reconsider given the tirade they launched again yesterday morning? One , claiming to be “Donald John” showed no remorse when he challenged a fellow student “your monkey face will be printed and sent to all my friends to watch out for you.” And another purporting to be “Elias Kepa” boasted: “Why are we up in UNI? Bcoz we are smart-will put a bullet in your head you {peace} of cake-you will “graduate in a coffin”. Time for UPNG authorities to intervene and shut this nonsense down?

  

It continues:

Elias Kepa

Hahaha.. Why are we up in UNI? Bcoz we are smart. For this we knew we could get ourselves into trouble and we used some fake names coz we are trouble makers. That's how smart we are. And Please go on and check the school for the desplayed names, we'll be sitting in our class laughing our ass out. You people are so dumb. But Joel, liklik life blo u bai mipla kisim. You smart ass stap.. Odau! You think we are wanna be gangsters? Well we'll show you. Your ugly face will change if we see you somewhere (moresby m liklik ples) will put a bullet in ur head u peace of cake. Hahaha can't believe how stupid u people are.. We are not gangsters, we are youngsters trying to teach smart asses how to talk politely.

Slozy Inaki

Hahahahahahaahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaahahhahaahahaha..... So stupid! Think we were dumb enough to put our real names? Nah how stupid you people are? You peoples notions are wrong, we are not wanna-be gangsters. We are youngsters! Just go on and have a hard time complaining but the male ugly face will be printed and emailed and shared by hand to all the youngsters, just wanna make Joel and Odau famous. Don't worry moresby is just a small place and i'ts gettin close to christmas too so u 2 supermans take good care. You'll be popular! We're just doing our job. :-D

Tiffany Twivey

Ok - so Bee Kay is Bhosip Kaiwi. I know his Dad and also know his Dad would be disgusted in your collective behaviours. See, on Facebook, your photos, your life, your friends are on display. Many of us have mutual friends with you boys. Cyberspace PNG is a small place.

Bee Kay

Tiffany is right boys. You boys are getting out of hand. You should be talking with some sense, none of you boys are in lower schools like me, you all are in UNI doing your 3rd and 4th years so use some common sense and act like adults.

Tiffany Twivey

Thank you Bee Kay - seems like you have a lot of your dad in you after all !!! They have now been mentioned in the Drum today and on many blogs and FB pages. Let us hope they find some sense somewhere.

Donzy Boyzone

‎@Bee Kay. You shut the hell up, your just a 16 year old kid in low schools so mind your own business and go get a girlfriend just like how you lower schools do things, always looking for girlfriends.

Bee Kay ‎

@Donald. I know I'm just 16 but atleast I can talk nicely and politely as a gentleman. Which you cannot! I know your smarter than me but atleast I respect the elder people. Which you don't! Now go get something and clean that dirty brain of yours. By the way please do me a faver and change your first fake name bcoz it really disgrace's my dads name, my dad has the same name but doesn't behave and talk smart like you.

__________________________________

Let's take a look at these young men directly, as they represent themselves on facebook:

OOPs sorry. Now I can't remember who is who?

 

Plenty of sage bloggers picked up the conversation: Little Green Palai, The Namarong Report, Critic PNG, and more.

But then there's this blog from a reformed troll:

UPNG students abuse Prominent Lawyer - Wisdom from Edebamon Blog

 I saw this at The Namorong Report and felt compelled to blog about it for a few reasons. Well, firstly because I am a UPNG Student and secondly because I spent alot of time being a troll on facebook. A troll is a persona that basically goes around insulting and annoying other people for kicks. I was a First Class Troll and I've earned battle-scars and trophies in the business of trolling. This is one of my trophies: Kanye "the College Drop-out" West Party page  You will notice that I am listed as an Admin on the group. We had hijacked that group after convincing the original admins that we were genuine Kanye West fans (which incidentally, I am). We hijacked the group and turned it inside out, insulting thousands of devoted fans, making many unjoin from the group. We had a blast. We were a well organized team of trolls from around the world and we all carried multiple accounts on facebook and had, unusually enough, a common code of conduct. Looking back, I can say trolling is a stupid and time-wasting activity. The 3 trolls below are therefore more than stupid because they prance around hurling insult using their real names. Papua New Guinea is a small country, dear friends. It is my informed opinion therefore, that Donald John, Marlon Abau and Elias Kepa are asses.  Let’s hope the University of Papua New Guinea deals with them appropriately and recovers its tarnished image. Ms Twivey, a senior lawyer, will be referring the matter to the University Disciplinary Council. And as we say in UPNG, Wai bai Nogat!? 

And the following---which pleads for lenience, because of course the future of these young lads is perhaps at stake (unlike all the women they may interact with) :

ARE THE THREE UPNG BOYS BEYOND REDEMPTION?

 

 

 Ben Yamai presents a different perspective to members of Sharp Talk following the outrage on Facebook, over the cowardly acts of three University of Papua New Guinea students who may have in effect damaged their career prospects. Ben asks:

“I wonder whether in our parochial support for each other and in our zeal to promote intellectual and objective discussion, we have denigrated our collective selves by over reacting in this instance?”

Let me state from the outset that I do not in any way condone the appalling behavior displayed by these so called “future leaders” of PNG and that I am writing this and will post knowing full well that I am most likely going to be attracting some harsh rebuttals. I myself commented on the thread created by Cuma PNG and stated that it would be counter-productive for us to be debating with “idiots” (my word) such as these.

We here on Sharp Talk have formed a clique, the membership of which is extremely diverse, and who it seems will stand by (or against) each other in intellectual debate and, as has been shown in recent times, the former when personal tragedy happened upon one of our very own, Reginald Renagi.

We have also been outspoken in our support for members of our forum who were subjected of some rather disturbing attacks on blogs and through vile viral emails. Not to have supported would have been inexcusable on the memberships’ part.

However, I wonder whether in our parochial support for each other and in our zeal to promote intellectual and objective discussion, we have denigrated our collective selves by over reacting

 As Martyn Namarong blogged back:

Tiffany replies to Ben

Tiffany Twivey

Ben - I am truly disappointed with your post. You clearly have no idea how prevalent DV is and who it is being accepted by the next generations as the norm. I have been taking action against DV for YEARS even teaching on the subject at Uni 15 years ago. And the situation is getting worse.

I don't mind being called a bitch or a whore or whatever - that wasn't the point - the point was that these guys said (1) women shouldn't talk poillitics and if they do (2) their husbnands should beat the shit out of them.

As someone who has had the shit beaten out of them by her husband for years - I eventually left after 5 years- and I am a strong, educated, independent woman but couldn't leave earlier. I had to in the end as I thought if I can't do it - what hope does anyone else have in PNG - plus my kids saw it.

I vowed to keep fighting against DV. And have thru free advice and thru susu mamas - but when I saw these boys posts I actually thought - what's the point in fighting anymore - it's never going to change. I wanted to give up - I posted on the SV site to see what others thought and have been so overwhelmed and grateful for the responses and support.

Because of THESE I will keep fighting - and Ben we NEED to deter future conduct by making these boys an example - I am so proud everyone has done it.

So you would have me go on, fighting on my own, going to the uni admin by myself - taking the heat from the families and more abuse.

Well I'm damn sick of fightying alone - I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL TO THOSE WHO HAVE SUPPORTED THIS FIGHT BY BLOGGING AND SPREADING THE W0ORD on this. I don't feel alone anymore. My love to you guys that have taken up this fight to make an example of these boys so that we HOPE others will think twice in the future.

There is no guarantee the Uni would d anything - see Jodam's posty - but everyone on this site has pulled together.

Ben - this site is AGAINST DV not discussing the merits of it or those who think it is OK. Really personally upset with you Ben as u, unlike others, know me well. 

Tiffany replies to Ben

Tiffany Twivey

Ben - I am truly disappointed with your post. You clearly have no idea how prevalent DV is and who it is being accepted by the next generations as the norm. I have been taking action against DV for YEARS even teaching on the subject at Uni 15 years ago. And the situation is getting worse.

I don't mind being called a bitch or a whore or whatever - that wasn't the point - the point was that these guys said (1) women shouldn't talk poillitics and if they do (2) their husbnands should beat the shit out of them.

As someone who has had the shit beaten out of them by her husband for years - I eventually left after 5 years- and I am a strong, educated, independent woman but couldn't leave earlier. I had to in the end as I thought if I can't do it - what hope does anyone else have in PNG - plus my kids saw it.

I vowed to keep fighting against DV. And have thru free advice and thru susu mamas - but when I saw these boys posts I actually thought - what's the point in fighting anymore - it's never going to change. I wanted to give up - I posted on the SV site to see what others thought and have been so overwhelmed and grateful for the responses and support.

Because of THESE I will keep fighting - and Ben we NEED to deter future conduct by making these boys an example - I am so proud everyone has done it.

So you would have me go on, fighting on my own, going to the uni admin by myself - taking the heat from the families and more abuse.

Well I'm damn sick of fightying alone - I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL TO THOSE WHO HAVE SUPPORTED THIS FIGHT BY BLOGGING AND SPREADING THE W0ORD on this. I don't feel alone anymore. My love to you guys that have taken up this fight to make an example of these boys so that we HOPE others will think twice in the future.

There is no guarantee the Uni would d anything - see Jodam's posty - but everyone on this site has pulled together.

Ben - this site is AGAINST DV not discussing the merits of it or those who think it is OK. Really personally upset with you Ben as u, unlike others, know me well.

Logging Main Street Madang: Bring on the Chipko Movement!

I just got an email from an Australian working for the Provincial Government in Madang, a fellow Chamber of Commerce member updating me on the last meeting I missed. It seems like the spirit of Greenpeace’s Esperanza missed our Urban LLG.

 

The Provincial Government, Madang Urban and the Works department are preparing to fell over 300 trees in Modilon Road. The reason appears to be to demonstrate their determination to build a new four-lane motorway from Baidal Road to the port wharf.

 

Having felled the trees it will then be easier to survey and measure the land available for a new road after which a design can be prepared, to be followed by a bid to the government for funds to build the highway.

 

I am concerned at the adverse environmental impact the felling will have on the character of the town as experienced by visitors and the lack of shade for pedestrians.  No work at present has been undertaken to assess how much traffic needs to be catered for given the new bridge link from Nambasa Road to the Airport and the North Coast Road, the forecast relocation of png port to Vidar and any proposals arising from the developing Urban Plan.

 

I see the work as a case of putting the cart before the horse, the present road if properly repaired and surfaced and with adequate pmv lay-bys  is well capable of handling the present traffic

 

As a visitor working in this Country I accept that if the residents of the town really want to see all these trees felled with no clear proposals for the future that is their choice, I can say goodbye to Madang and go home. A few people appear concerned but have no influence.

 

How do you feel and have you any suggestions ?

 

How about an Ecology 101 course for the Provincial Government, Madang Urban LLG and the Works Department?

 

I have a cheat sheet for them:

 

HOW TREES IMPROVE THE ENVIRONMENT

 

Air Quality/Pollution Reduction

• Trees help to clean the air by “catching” airborne pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and small particulates less than 10 microns in size.3

• Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the

atmosphere.15

• There is up to a 60% reduction in street level particulates with trees.1

• One tree that shades your home in the city will also save fossil fuel, cutting CO2 buildup as much as 15

forest trees.16

• Each year an average acre of mature trees absorb up to 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air, which is equal to the amount of Co2 produced by driving a car 26,000 miles.8

 

Water Quality/Erosion

• Trees reduce topsoil erosion, prevent harmful land pollutants contained in the soil from getting into our waterways, slow down water run-off, and ensure that our groundwater supplies are continually being replenished. For every 5% of tree cover added to a community, storm water runoff is reduced by

approximately 2%.1

• Trees help communities across the country avoid millions of dollars in storm water management costs.18

• Trees reduce soil erosion when planted along streams and waterways.18

• Trees can intercept between 7 percent and 22 percent of storm water runoff from impermeable surfaces.17

 

Energy Savings

• Homeowners that properly place trees in their landscape can realize savings up to 58% on daytime air

conditioning and as high as 65% for mobile homes. If applied nationwide to buildings not now benefiting

from trees, the shade could reduce our nation’s consumption of oil by 500,000 barrels of oil/day.12

• Projections suggest that 100 million additional mature trees in US cities (3 trees for every unshaded single family home) could save over $2 billion in energy costs per year.10

 

A CANOPY FOR COMMUNITY AND SOCIETAL WELL-BEING

 

Trees Reduce Crime, Increase Public Safety and Build Community

• A University of Illinois study finds that trees in urban areas are directly correlated with lower levels of fear, fewer incivilities, and less violent and aggressive behavior.4

• In an inner-city neighborhood, the greener the residence, the lower the crime rate. Residents reported fewer violent crimes and property crimes in green neighborhoods as compared to those that were barrern.4

• Researchers found fewer reports of physical violence in homes that had treesoutside the buildings. Of the residents interviewed, 14% of residents living in barren conditions have threatened to use a knife or gun against their children versus 3% for the residents living in green conditions.15

 

The Healing Power of Trees

• School children with ADHD show fewer symptoms and girls show more academic self-discipline if they

have access to natural settings.19

• Researchers found fewer reports of physical violence in homes that had trees outside the buildings. Of the residents interviewed, 14% of residents living in barren conditions have threatened to use a knife or gun against their children versus 3% for the residents living in green conditions.15

• Studies have shown that hospital patients with a view of trees out their windows recover much faster and with fewer complications and require fewer pain-killing medications than similar patients without such views.13

• A Texas A & M study indicates that trees help create relaxation and well being.18

• A U.S. Department of Energy study reports that trees reduce noise pollution by acting as a buffer and

absorbing 50% of urban noise.18

• Reduced air pollution from the presence of trees helps to ameliorate respiratory problems, such as

asthma—the leading serious chronic illness among children.17

• Trees can provide protection against skin cancer by reducing UV-B exposure (the most damaging type of solar radiation) by about half, according to a study by Richard Grant, Purdue University; and Gordon

Heisler, USDA Forest Service.17

• Time spent in nature reduces mental fatigue, restoring the ability to concentrate and pay attention.4

• Exposure to even small amounts of trees and grass aids concentration, leading to greater effectiveness.4

 

MONEY GROWS ON TREES

 

• Large, mature street trees are found to be the most important indicator of attractiveness in a community.17

• Property values increase 5-15% when compared to properties without trees (depends on species, maturity, quantity and location)18

• Shoppers are willing to pay up to 11 percent more for products purchased in shops along tree-lined streets than they would pay for the same item in a barren setting.17

• The quality of products were perceived as being better in shopping districts having trees versus those with barren sidewalks.17

• Shoppers stay longer in plazas that have trees.17

• Appraised property values of homes that are adjacent to parks and open spaces are typically 8-20% higher than those of comparable properties elsewhere.17

• Strategically placed trees can cut summer air conditioning costs for businesses by as much as 50 percent or more.17

• Rental rates of commercial office properties were approximately 7% higher on sites having quality

landscape, including trees.17

• Office workers with a view of nature are more productive, report fewer illnesses, and have higher job

satisfaction.17

• Trees have the potential to reduce social service budgets, decrease police calls for domestic violence, strengthen urban communities, and decrease the incidence of child abuse according to the study. Chicago officials heard that message in 2005. The city government spent $10 million to plant 20,000

trees, a decision influenced by Kuo’s and Sullivan’s research, according to the Chicago Tribune.

• Researcher Kuo suggests that “cities would do well having nature outside every doorstep.”4

 

References

1. Coder, Dr. Kim D., “Identified Benefits of Community Trees and Forests", University of Georgia, October, 1996.

2. USDA Forest Service Pamphlet #R1-92-100

3. International Society of Arboriculture Tree Care Bulletin, Benefits of Trees

4. Kuo, F.E. 2001, “Environment and Crime in the Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime?” Environment and Behavior, Volume 33, Number), pp

343-367.---www.herluiuc.edu

5. Kuo, F.E., 1998 Fertile Ground for Community: Inner-City Neighborhood Common Spaces. American Journal of Community Psychology, 26 www.herluiuc.edu

6. Georgia Urban Forest Council; University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; www.cucf.com

7. Kuo , F.E. 2003. The role of arboriculture in healthy social ecology. Journal of Arboriculture, 29, 3, 148-155

8. Nowak, David J., “Benefits of Community Trees”, (Brooklyn Trees, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report, in review)

9. Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP), “Trees and Our Air”, January, 1999.

10. McAliney, Mike. Arguments for Land Conservation: Documentation and Information Sources for Land Resources Protection, Trust for Public Land,

Sacramento, CA, December, 1993

11. Michigan State University Extension, Urban Forestry #07269501, “Benefits of Urban Trees”

12. American Forests, “The Case for Greener Cities”, Autumn 1999.

13. American Forests, “How Trees Fight Climate Change”, 1999.

14. Crompton, J.L. 2001. Parks and Economic Development. Chicago, IL. American Planning Association

15. Prow, Tina., “The Power of Trees”, Human Environmental Research Laboratory at University of Illinois.

16. National Arbor Day Foundation pamphlet #90980005

17. Georgia Urban Forestry Publication, Shade-Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities, Healthy People, 2004

18. www.colorado trees.org, Benefits of Trees

19. Coping with ADD: The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings, Environment and Behavior. Vol. 33 No. 1. January 2001. 54-77, 2001 Sage Publications, Inc. 445 N. Pennsylvania Street, Suite 910 * Indianapolis, IN 46204 P: 317-264-7555 * F: 317-264-7565

 

 

Alternatively, I propose a Chipko Movement for Madang. The Chipko movement practised the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department.

If it can save Indian trees, it can save the glorious rain trees of Madang.

 

Whatever It Takes

 This is the title of a report by Alan Oxley, the RH consultant and apologist, detailing the crimes against objectivity committed by Greenpeace in its campaign against the logging giant. Greenpeace will do, we assume, whatever it takes.

The truth seems to be that Rimbunan Hijau will do whatever it takes, and in their case, it takes a lot more sludge and money and compromised values. They have been in the country for almost as long as I have, and in that time most of us observers have watched the system of influence and patronage balloon through national politics, down to provincial politics, to middle management civil service and even, in the last most tiresome episode of the story, through the  field of journalism.

Development is a dirty business. It’s not nice, and it’s not clean even in the best of times, especially where you have people scrambling for promises to be lifted out of poverty and physical isolation. PNG is certainly no worse than most developing nations when it comes to compromised integrity, tacky dictatorial posturing, bullies in uniform, and covering one’s self in either a flag or a cross. People who preach love and righteousness and issue venomous attacks on their critics are not unique to development either, but maybe they just look meaner, more desperate.

A couple of years ago I wrote a piece on my blog about this history of the Chinese in PNG---nothing authoritative or even comprehensive. But the Post Courier picked it up and printed it, except that they printed only part of the essay and for some reason the Malaysian owners of The National newspaper ran their own condemnation of me personally, calling for my deportation as a racist American expatriate, etc. They were fired up about my blogs in general on the tuna industry, as The National has been a stalwart defender of these canneries as engines of ‘growth’ in Lae, Madang an Wewak.  My counter-arguments are always on the basis of primary research on social impacts in each site, and research done, not incidentally, by Papua New Guinea ethnographers for the most part.

Now and again in the social media I get attacked by National reporters for being anti-development, anti-growth, anti-capital, and of course, anti-Papua new Guinean. Someone a few weeks ago wrote that I should (once again) be deported because I’d done more harm than good in PNG. ( I wish that this were the real criteria for deportation, because in that case we would certainly not still be fighting Rimbunan Hijau.)

On my blog, too, I do have to erase the occasional racist and sexist rant from someone who clearly has a lot of personal demons, always a comment along the lines of my liking black dick, being a loser, having no credentials, etc. No more or less than a lot of bloggers get I imagine. This sort of ugliness is almost always effective because people averse to entertaining such dialogue instantly shut down---if only temporarily. This has definitely happened to me in the past.

Recently, however, I’ve been wondering what exactly ‘whatever it takes’ might be for RH, because social media flak over their sailing to Pomio on the Esperanza, supporting landowners and NGOs in a fight to rout yet another of RH’s 60-plus subsidiaries logging primary forest in PNG.  In the name of oil palm. Or, as we are always told (and if you go to the RH website and link to publications there is a small library of reports by Alan Oxley and his ‘consulting’ firm, ITS, on the subject), in the name of development and economic growth.

Other writers have captured the details of this Pomio fight better than I, and the discussion threads on FB pages have been crackling with excellent points, even scholarly citations, from members of the PNG conservation community, including Kenn Mondiai of Eco Forestry Forum. They are better placed than I to explain the anti-RH landowners’ history and position.

Whatever it takes, scatologically

But the point of this commentary now, is that the pro-RH position has taken a really bad turn for the worse. First, as we all know, the company flew in an s award winning social commentator/journalist from The National to have a look at the project and report on the RH arguments against Greenpeace coming into the area. Dutifully, and as many of us learned on repeated FB posts thereafter, we learned that this person has mouths to feed, he is a single parent, and must dance to the tune of his employers, and so forth. Besides, he has also said firmly, RH is the only entity offering ‘development’ to these wretched ‘taim bipo’ villagers.

There’s a big backstory here about the Kivung cult in Pomio, which dates from the Second World War, but which reemerged in the sixties.  At risk of simplifying,  the cult emerged (like so many across Melanesia) from disappointment in both the church (here, Catholic) and the government, and their endless promises of a better life---infused as these are, of course, with the misleading metaphors of the ‘bounty’ of the lord, the ‘rewards’ of modernity and so forth. Desperate for change, steeped in the ‘laws’ of both the Administration and the church, these community groups really are development organizations intent on finding the key to social change on their own terms.   In the case of Kivung, their mechanism was exchange, and the system of indebtedness that runs throughout Melanesian life. The cult members gathered money and gave it to others, to form an indenture, an obligation on their part, to give back---and to bring the cargo. This centered upon the charismatic leader Koriam, but later involved Malmal’s Alois Koki and Kolman Molu (whose sepulcher is a Kivung shrine in Pomio today).

As G.W. Trompf writes (in Payback, 1994, Cambridge, p266):

By 1978 Kiving members were persuaded by Alois Koki (currently custoduian of the fund) to embark upon what must stand as the grandest piece of participative reciprocity in the history of all the  movements…: generous donations to help in both national and international disasters, with K6000 to the Papua New Guinea highlands famine relief, and K4000 to the Brisbane flood victims…Using the money this way quite evidently ‘betokens the leaders’ desire to enter into reciprocity with powers which have large financial resources’, and which may hopefully choose in return to bestow their benison upon the Kivung. Predictably, the Kivung has been prepared to put money into development within its own region and on its own terms (but in 1974 the national government rejected their offer of K26,000 to build a new [and first] high school in the Pomio area, as a dangerous compromise); predictably, too, the Kivung leaders turned their backs on East new Britain Provincial Government pressure to provide financial succor for earthquake victims on the Gazelle in 1985.

Trompf summarizes the movement as follows (and I think this is pertinent to what we see in Pomio today).

The Pomio Kivung…reflects a fascinating combination of reprisal and concession towards the agencies of change…Whether in confrontation or subtle withdrawal, it wreaks quiet vengeance on the ‘officials of interference’; it defends the right to punish its own detractors. Yet, the stringencies of its lo, as well as exploration it makes of possible reciprocities with agencies quite outside its jurisdiction, are part and parcel of expecting the new order of positive payback—of rewards hailing, above all, from the returning dead. There is a recognizable structure and inner consistency found in this movement’s logic of retribution...(Ibid).

I wonder if RH can understand the hornet’s nest it’s stepped into. Famous for broken promises and boomerang ‘development’, for roads that go to trees not villages, and for schools and aid posts that never materialize, Rimbunan Hijau is the living and breathing embodiment of the development curse. They are the Cargo that desperate and government-neglected over-evangelized communities have hopes and prayed for. No doubt there have been Kivung collections up and down Pomio and offerings made to these great Malaysian demigods for the goods and services they will one day, when all the trees are gone and all the oil palm planted, will finally receive.

Good luck to em.

In a recent late October exchange on blog, Kenn Norae Mondiai was doing his best to explain to journalist Malum Nalu that the promise of development by RH was indeed little more than a promise.

Iam an Eastern Highlander, have worked in the logging industry and seen the problems and empty promises and poor quality roads, bridges, schools and others and left in 1994 into the NGO sector. I have travelled PNG rural areas seen people's hardships and issues, while Pomio is on the front now directly to the north in Open Bay another subsidiary of RH is logging the forests there while disregarding the struggle going on there between the coastal Nakanais and the inland Mamusi people over land and timber royalty. Malum should fly back there on Tropics Air and report to us what is going and also why over the years many developmental infrastructures that RH has agreed to in the timber permits never gets build ??

I headed a EU funded program (Islands Regional Envir & Community Dev Prog) from 1995-2001 in the West Pomio area from Irena down to Uvol covering the area currently logged by RH building infrastructure at Palmalmal worth between K0.75-K1.25 million and building peoples capacity and training them and providing technical support on community based Ecoforestry operations. The whole area where the logging taking place under SABLs now was under that program, it was creating employment income generation, training educational awareness on environmental issues and it was full filling the Govt policy on value adding and landowner participation in the forest industry, PNG Forest Authority was fully aware of that successful project, it brought cash into the village communities and people were fully engaged protecting the forest and not destroying it like what RH has done now.

It's the work of a few greedy vision less people like John Palrulrea Chairman of Memalo Holdings who is arrogant hardcore Kivung Association Member Riding on the Cargo Cult principles layed down by the former Kivung leaders who died including the late Alois Koki.
Just across Jaquinot Bay, see what logging has done under the Inland Pomio TRP, the Pomio peoples environment is spoilt and the road under the Timber permit to link Pomio with Bialla is not completed. Interestingly John Palrulrea is or was a renegade Board member of the Magasaki Landowner company, he saw money flowing from timber operations and with that dream has fooled people of west Pomio through RH for the current operation.
Thanks to the landowners of Mauna, Bairaman, Puapal, Irena, Lau, and Malmal who can see the benefits of Ecoforestry and have stood firm and opposed RH and logging and thanks to Jacob Samo & Paul Pavol the champions of the Pomio people through their Pomio Potong Paga Association and last but not the least to Greenpeace and NGOs for their actions to bring the peoples plight against illegal logging and land grabbing under the pretext of SABLs and Agroforestry.

Kenn Mondiai
Chairman of the Board
PNG Ecoforestry Forum

In a follow up he explained that:

I lived on Pomio for 7 years, have not read the reports in the National because I don't buy it, Any development should be people driven and sustainable with protection of the culture and tradition of the local communities whilst ensuring environmental protection and sustainability.
RH is a logger they came into PNG rapped and ripped our forests, they bribed and corrupted our bureaucrats and politicians. They have no respect for our country's laws and our people's customs.
They have failed in many of their timber project agreements and permit obligations all over this country.
In Pomio FYI oil palm is not a viable crop as the top soil is too think (less then 10cm thick) and the base is coral limestone, RH if they are a serious oil palm developer will stick with their Wawoi Guavi Project where oil palm is suitable why go to Pomio, well it's only for the valuable stands of kwila, Malas, Taun and many high value timber species just near the coast "no need for road construction" RH uses less money to make money at the expense of the people's ignorance. Greenpeace actions are commendable, I would have been there on board Espenanza unfortunately was overseas. Don't believe RH they will never seriously develop an oil palm plantation in west Pomio, once all the trees are harvested they will also depart giving all kinds of excuses that oil palm is not feasible due to soil fertility "something we already know" Greenpeace and NGO action is good because we know RH's dirty tactics in PNG ... Our govt is fucking corrupt and they will not do a thing. Kenn

Mr. Nalu has been forced to come out and defend himself. Writing in response to his critics, he stated on PNGexposed BLOG:

To all those who have said such nasty things about me, just because I went to Pomio, a place that time has forgotten, I challenge you to risk your life on a small plane like me, fly to Palmalmal, walk up the mountains and talk to the people of Mamusi, who still live as their ancestors did!

When the blog, PNGexposed, started to run stories critical of RH in Pomio, they began to receive comments from a character named Brice Copeland (with an email address by that name). That’s not a typo, although it is close to the name Bruce Copeland, an Australian Kokoda Trail trek leader, ‘military advisor’, and holistic-living HIV advisor--with whom Malum Nalu had a heated exchange in 2009 by email, regarding references to each other in blogs and the press: one calling the other a neo-colonial with cargo cult mentality, the other defending his homophobia in the press by calling other AIDs advisors, newspaper editors, and critics in general anti-family gays, etc. The name, just a typo away from the known individual, has been used on PNGexposed to flog some of the most hateful and paranoid sentiments ever known to ‘social’ media. Eventually the blog called out Malum Nalu directly and asked if he was using this cover to slander his own critics and make this character even more loathsome than ever. It has truly become a circus of homophobia, racism, misogyny, flogged family values, pity-me tactics and false bravado.

Following the Pomio protests, no one has heard from Copeland himself. On the other hand, we have heard quite a bit from one of The National’s leading reporters. This person has accused the blogger Martyn Namarong of being nothing more than a buai seller and thus having no right to critique his coverage of RH in Pomio. And yet, most of us curious about the Greenpeace protest, as about so many contemporary issues in PNG, have increasingly turned to Martyn’s smart and thoughtful posts in The Namarong Report. As  Peter Rongotha recently wrote in PNGexposed:

[Namaorng’s] blog on the ongoing crisis in Pomio where RH’s behavior has been terrible against our own citiziens, where RH has lied about Greenpeace breaking custom laws and where they are trying to make out that everyone loves logging in the area is typical for RH. Remember local landowners in Pomio did the right thing. Instead of resorting to violence like RH – they went to the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Special Agricultural Business Leases (SABL) testified on their own behalf and returned home. And when they got there RH sent in the thugs, dressed as police. It’s not the first time RH has done this, but this time, thanks to the social media – which Mr. Namorong pointed out, people are not remaining quiet.

Nalu’s pitiful report made serious allegations that Greenpeace had broken PNG Customs regulations by entering Pomio District. He also claimed Greenpeace had caused friction in the Pomio community when in fact the friction between landowners had been incited by RH and its landowner company “Directors” who, in fact, arranged for supportive landowners to act a logging company security due to the confrontations between Gilford’s (an RH subsidiary) Malaysian staff and landowners opposing the logging.

Besides the obvious in regards to Nalu and what he “reported” and why is the response from him and his supporters and those of the people supporting Namorong. Nalu, who began his sorry defense by trying to make himself a hero saying he risked his life by going out to Pomio, tried – and failed – to make fun of Namorong. He responded by pretending to laugh – a sure sign Namorong got to him with his analysis. He said Namorong was a buai seller turned blogger and suggested he go back to selling buai. In other words Mr. Namorong you nailed him and upset him. Now Nalu supporters jumped on the bandwagon calling him low-life, scum, questioning his sexual preference and laughing amongst themselves.

However those that were supporting Namorong’s right to report or supporting what Namorong had to say never got to that low level of name calling and trying to down Nalu. They stuck to the issue at hand. As I was watching this I then realised there is a change going on in PNG – and its a big one – and it is reflected in the response of Nalu and friends to Namorong. There is a new generation of Papua New Guineans and they are thinkers – they are not small boys with egos like Nalu displayed in his defense nor are they like those that supported Nalu by name calling. The new breed think, analyse and try to engage in constructive dialogue. They give a damn about PNG and they want to do something about it and they will. And when they see what happened in Pomio when, once again, RH comes in plays the bully its always been – they are not going to shut up. They are seeing it, calling it out and they are moving towards action.

As if this soap opera were not ugly enough, today things got a lot uglier. Lydia Kaliap, who, with her husband, runs a music and arts academy for settlement kinds in Port Moresby (an initiative that, not surprisingly, has won admirers from home and abroad, government and media alike---as a true example of what an NGO can do to make positive change)—has been on FB ;sharing’ and commenting and calling out The National for its bias reporting the Pomio crisis.

As Lydia revealed today, the first day she began to FB her opinions, she received the following email:

 Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:48:31 +1000
 Subject: Black cock whore!
 From: brucecopeland65@gmail.com
 To: cuma-png@live.com
 
 Black cock whore!
 
 White cocks can't satisfy so you head up to PNG!

31/10/11 – sent to Lydia only—from the same address:

“Your mouth, ass and cunt stink, Lydia, that we can smell it from a mile away!”

And another to her from the same address:

“We are watching your every move and every word you say Lydia, and when
we strike, a rocket will be placed into your dirty black cock-loving
anus! We are watching everything you say on Facebook and other
websites, You have been warned!”

The same day, the following was sent to a massive list (as you can see):

 Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:48:51 +1000
 Subject: Lydia Kailap
 From: brucecopeland65@gmail.com
 To: aholistics@hotmail.com; cuma-png@live.com
 CC: benelong@bigpond.net.au; yhriewazi@spp.com.pg; seroro@spp.com.pg; huggibear@ourbrisbane.com; toole@burnet.edu.au; johnfowke01@bigpond.com; boonah.vista1@bigpond.com; ahayes@online.net.pg; andyng@thenational.com.pg; ben_manoi@hotmail.com; billjames@gmail.com; bill.shorten.mp@aph.gov.au; bnangoi@spp.com.pg; editorhealth@gmail.com; brucies_mum@hotmail.com; claire.thoms@unifem.org; ctaimbari@pngtourism.org.pg; corney.alone@gmail.com; ulgdavid@hotmail.com; esorom_daoni@health.gov.pg; mkariko@gmail.com; elizabeth.cox@unifem.org; elizabeth.reid@runbox.com; erastuskamburi@rocketmail.com; evanagirao@gmail.com; evoscs@bigpond.net.au; fsk_star@hotmail.com; garyjufa@yahoo.com; gerardjm@chariot.net.au; henry@savethemales.ca; jacqui.badcock@undp.org; jimmielijah.mose@gmail.com; jkbougainville@gmail.com; jollygudfela@gmail.com; kevin.rudd.mp@aph.gov.au; kumaran98@hotmail.com; leashaw@bigpond.com; leskay@beneserve.com.au; aabarachiel@daltron.com.pg; lorraine.manua@ombudsman.gov.pg; lkapi@thenational.com.pg; lyndalscrivener@hotmail.com; m_aret@hotmail.com; mdaure@thenational.com.pg; megsmogs@hotmail.com; bupnghivaids@global.net.pg; mjacka@global.net.pg; nemken@global.net.pg; npascoe@spp.com.pg; bwellspng@gmail.com; rondegraybirch@gmail.com; svetali@cpm.adventist.org.pg; patrickjwright@me.com; phukahu@gmail.com; pbarter@mtspng.com; sapuri@daltron.com.pg; papuatauna@hotmail.com; sharne.black@yahoo.com; watsons@unaids.org; sujata55@hotmail.com; tedwinsmith@yahoo.com.au; kunduthomas@yahoo.com; phsaf@hotmail.com; pohromo@hotmail.com; tkuligi@hotmail.com; wellnesslodgepng@gmail.com; holmes@burnet.edu.au
>

“Friends, media, I want you all be to be cautious of an Australian conwoman who goes by the name of Lydia Kailap, AKA Cuma PNG.
She is contesting for Moresby South and is going through every means to get votes.
I also appeal to Gary Juffa, Customs and Police to thoroughly investigate her.
This is urgent!”

“Attached is a picture of the woman and her black lover. Police: Please arrange to have them arrested.”

“They sould also be checked for drugs.”

“This old white bitch is also responsible for the spate of attacks against RH and The National over the last couple of days.

Please move in to arrest her and her husband for defamation as well as inciting trouble.
She and her foul mouth should be deported immediately.
She is also the one who has been making false accusations against police.”

“Come out Cuma PNG, aka Lydia Kailap, you cannot hide! Peter Jackson, you should be ashamed of yourself for taking rubbish from this conwomen and putting on your blog. Your ass might be sued too!”

Give this writer the Crocodile Prize!!!

 IF this is the troll who has been using the alias of Bruce or Brice Copeland ---the same troll who has morphed into a handful of other PNG and expatriate personae to slam everyone even slightly critical of Rimbunan Hijau---and IF this troll is the same person who pleads family values (and screeches these values even louder than the real Copeland himself)---and who then whines on FB about being slandered as gay, but then slanders others as the same—

Then I think we are looking at the Kivung Cult Curse Writ Large. It is THIS kind of conflation of righteousness and delusion, of gender roles and transgressions, of colonial fears of miscegenation and pity for the poor and helpless----that is fertile ground for soulless monopoly capital: We give you our kidness, our professional reputations, our infinite hospitality, our land, our logs, our future, RH---and what will you give us in return?  

A closing note: the photos here come from a trip ca. 2007 to Pomio, when the widow of Kolman Molu greeted a group of tourists from a small Australian vessel, bearing valuable shell rings and wearing the clothes of her deceased husband. Coincidentally, I was alsong with the former Eastern Highlands kiap, John Coleman, and his wife, who had long retired from coffee and advertising in PNG to the Gold Coast, and were back on a cruise. As we walked through the shrine for Kolman Molu, saw his photo embedded with a brief historical plaque on his grave, it struck Coleman that this man had worked for him so many years ago, in Kainantu. That he had returned home to Pomio and taken Coleman's own name, Kolman, to embark on his career reinvigorating the Kivung. This was a strange, uncomfortable, circle closing, Coleman felt, and it saddened him to see how much had not been done in his former assistant's New Britain home, even after all this time. We watched as the Kivung members handed irreplaceable shell valuables to complete strangers, as tokens of their visit, in a typical gesture of reciprocity that would never ever be fulfilled.

The circle draws tighter now, roughly 5 years later, as we learn how much more Pomio is willing to give away for no guarantees of return. 

When a Malaysian logging company fear-mongers about the national government...using the former Chief Justice...it's a red flag to all of us

As if hijacking the reputation and voice of a prominent journalist weren't enough.

Below the Post-Courier explains why Peter O'Neill wants an apology.

Next thing you know, we'll see Paul Tiensten working maitre d' at Dynasty restaurant.

PM tells Sir Amet: Apologise Prime Minister Peter O’Neill yesterday called on Sir Arnold Amet to apologise to the judiciary and the people of Papua New Guinea for making an unfounded and highly speculative public statement about the judiciary. “It is quite clear Sir Arnold is embarking on a campaign aimed at creating fear in minds of the members of the judiciary. It is a calculated move orchestrated to cast aspersions on the government of the people that I lead,” Mr O’Neill said. “It is very demeaning for a former Chief Justice of PNG to make such an outrageous statement, especially at a time when the Supreme Court panel is deliberating on a case concerning the decision of Parliament on August 2.” Mr O’Neill was referring to Sir Arnold’s comments in the Malaysian owned newspaper The National newspaper in which he claimed that the O’Neill/Namah Government was planning to displace the National Court judges including the chief justice. Sir Arnold claimed in the newspaper report he had confirmed from “the highest level” that discussions were held to displace Sir Salamo and other judges. “I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: My Government respects the Judiciary and its independence. Its members are men and women of the highest integrity, sworn to serve without fear or favour. “Whatever Sir Arnold is attempting, I am absolutely confident the judiciary will not be swayed. “In fact, Sir Arnold should produce evidence to back his claim. If he does not, then it is clear he had gone public in an attempt to cast fear in minds of the members of the Judiciary, calculated to gain legal advantage in the matter that is before the Court,” he said. “He must now promptly apologise to the judiciary and the people of Papua New Guinea.”

The hard work of health in Saidor

Story by Scott Waide

            Dilung Gama and her daughter Martina    sit on bed in a small maternity ward   at the  Saidor Health Center. Martina  who suffers from epilepsy,    gave birth near  their village  a few days ago.    

            The  child has been given away for adoption and Dilung  - who appears to be in her 60s  - says  they  did that because Martina has too many children.   She doesn’t say how many  children her daughter has   but she points to a boy behind her  and says: “That’s one of them.” 

            Like many other parts of Papua New Guinea,  stories about the  plight of women and children    is all too common.    We’ve become desensitized  to  images and stories that would cause panic and alarm  in other countries.  

            Martina is one of the lucky few  who have made it to a health center.   Her village was beside a road and  she was fortunate  that her relatives brought her to  Saidor in time.  Many others aren’t so fortunate.

            “…For instance,  we get a  radio message that says there’s a women in pain,” says Lynette Dawo, a community health worker.  “In actual  fact,  she’s been in pain for the last three or four days and the message has just reached us  because it took several days for her husband  to get to a radio.” 

            The  Raikos area of Madang shares a  common border with the Morobe province.   The area is  rugged   and  mountainous. It’s people are scattered  along  across a thin coastal strip   stretching from the Astrolabe to Wasu  in Morobe.  Many more  live in hamlets in the  the rugged hills overlooking the coast.  Transportation is extremely difficult  when it comes to  medical emergencies.

            Lynette and other  workers here at Saidor   are a  dedicated lot of health professionals. But their dedication and commitment  has not always been enough to save countless lives lost because of transport difficulties.

            “It is a painful place  to  work,”   she says.  “Our patients are like family.

            She  recalls  a  medevac she  requested several years ago for a  woman  who was suffering from birth complications.  She died while  Lynette  other staff  were  desperately trying to find a boat.

            “I  cried for her. I went to the  health office and  I said:  why did it  take so long to find the boat. We  let  her die.” 

            Saidor had a  sea ambulance once.  But the heath Center didn’t have the money to  get it fixed  after it broke down 10 years ago.   The health centers,  buildings are badly in need of maintenance.   The workers point out that all available resources  are channeled towards saving lives.   Transportation alone eats into the meager  user fees collected by the health center. 

            “Sometimes we try to get the patients to pay for  emergency transportation,” says  Gabriel Puak.  “ But  they can’t afford it. Transport difficulties also has a major impact on the local economy and their ability to make their own money.” 

            Gabriel holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Midwifery.  In saidor, he has been able to reduce the number of  deaths  during birth.  He  knows he can do a lot more if  only he had the money and  the means of transportation  to get  the medicines and staff to  the many rural locations that demand attention.  

            “Sometimes I sit  at home and wonder  why I was born here and why I chose this profession.   I’ve got the skills to do the job  but how do I get to those many people  who need help.”

           

           

 

           

And as if a crash weren't enough....Quake shakes Papua New Guinea

As we still convulse in sadness over the Madang plane crash, some of the tremors felt this afternoon were actually caused by an earthquake somewhere (I think?) in the Owen Stanley Range.

The CNN story below was emailed to me from a friend in India who had just seen it on CNN's website and wanted to ask how we were. I said, fine--you must be thinking of the plane crash? He wrote--No, an earthquake, but sorry about the crash too.

By the CNN Wire Staff

October 14, 2011 -- Updated 0442 GMT (1242 HKT)

(CNN) -- A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rattled Papua New Guinea early Friday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was centered about 200 miles north-northeast of Port Moresby and had a depth of 28 miles.

No tsunami warning was issued, according to the Tsunami Warning Center.

Papua New Guinea is on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

______________________________

Social media. This morning fb was crackling with news on the survivors, the plane site, who, when where, as none of the major papers could get to press in time and the radio kept repeating an abc news story from last night. Tweets and posts from the recovery team on the ground in Rai Coast and the hospital in town worked like a phone tree in days of yore, alerting families and friends everywhere. It brought food to the families waiting at the haus morata at Modilon Hospital, and called in others to sit with kids/pick up relatives/prepare mattresses while some rushed to be with the grieving, in classic PNG style.

Families wait.

The crash site in Markum.

The lone surviving passenger, a Chinese businessman, who suffered burns.

DWU students wait last night. Today we learned the five of their fellow students perished in the crash.

I want to call attention to the staff at the hospital, namely irene Topagal, who works for the CEO, and who has been on the scene all morning, was there through much of last night, and is still helping organize families and personnel in this horror story.

Below is Nancy Dui, from Amele and Rai Coast, who arrived with buiscuits and water for the families donated from Abel computers.

Martin Tsang donated water bottles, Globe gave cartons of water, Madang Butchery gave water, and Gala also brought water. They won't be thirsty. Joyce Rainbubu, Franceis Akuani, Sharon Samor, Bernard Yake and Chris Dominic of Nancy Sullivan and Assoc all brought biscuits, water, mattresses and in the afternoon a big pot of hot chicken stew for the staff and families (I am so proud of them).

Most poignant to me was seeing Maria Mosusu sitting at the Haus Morata today, having made it to work at Brian Bell in town, only to be told that her sister and her sister's kids had all gone down in the flight. She fainted, then found her way to the hospital where DWU staff brought some of the families to the campus for grief counselling.

Our hearts go out to everyone.

Heavy hearts in Madang

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-13/plane-crashes-in-png/3570522

 

Three hours ago an Airlines PNG Dash 8 crashed on approach to Madang. Some say there was a fire on deck. We'll have to find out tomorrow. All we know is it crashed in Gogol, just a few miles out of town, on the beach across from Bilbil Island. 28 people are said to have died. Four people survived, and they are said to be the captain, co-captain, one crew and one passenger.

Grief everywhere. Facebook is filling up with shocked comments and prayers. The phone is filling with SMS messages. And alot of people, at 9.30 PM, are already asleep only to wake tomorrow morning to horrible news.

I hope hope hope it was fast for everyone.

 ----The latest news is that the parents of Divine Word University students were arriving tonight for a special christening of the children this weekend. Crowds of DWU students can be heard crying outside the police station tonight waiting for more news.

Passenger plane crashes in Papua New Guinea - 28 feared dead

• by: Tim Vollmer and Henry Budd
• From: The Daily Telegraph
• October 13, 2011 11:57PM

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Crash ... a plane similar to the one reported in the PNG incident. Source: The Daily Telegraph

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AN aircraft crashed in Papua New Guinea last night, with 28 people believed dead.

Early reports indicated Australians were possibly on board the Dash 8 aircraft operated by Airlines PNG.

The flight was enroute from Lae to the resort port town of Madang, when it went down over land in bad weather about 6pm yesterday.

The plane was carrying 32 passengers when it crashed 20km south of its destination, a spokesman for the Accident Investigation Commission said.

People from a nearby village are believed to have rescued four crew members who survived, though with serious burns.

However, police feared last night that all 28 passengers had died.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was last night seeking to confirm with PNG authorities whether any Australians were onboard.

"There were reports of fire and there have been some fatalities," AIC spokesman Sid O'Toole told the ABC.

It is believed that most of the passengers on board were parents on their way to attend the thanksgiving for the children attending the Divine Word University in Madang.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Papua New Guinea said the doomed plane sent out a distress call before the crash.

Australia has sent four army Blackhawk helicopters to the crash site to assist with the search and rescue effort at the request of PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, according to local media reports.

Mr O'Neill had been back in the country for less than an hour after flying in from Australia when he was informed of the crash.

The Blackhawks were in Port Moresby for joint defence force exercises and were immediately dispatched to the crash site.

The recovery of victims and crash scene investigations were expected to begin at first light.

The PNG Public Enterprises Minister Sir Mekere Morauta expressed his sympathy for those who have lost their lives in the crash.

"This is a terrible accident, and many people have died," Mr Morauta said.

"I offer my condolences to the families of the victims of this disaster.

"I join with all other Papua New Guineans in mourning our loss."

It is the second fatal incident involving an Airlines PNG aircraft in recent years. In August 2009 an Airlines PNG Twin Otter crashed on approach to the Kokoda airstrip, killing all 13 people on board including nine Australians.

 

 

 

You won't read this in the National

 

yutok

Wednesday 12th October, 2011

Sound development vs logging

Last weekend, landowners in West Pomio area in West New Britain reported to civil societies that police were flown into the area by Gilford, a subsidiary of logging giant Rimbunan Hijau Group (RH). The policemen, the report stated, assaulted and brutalised villagers during raids into several villages. The police action against the villagers came about because the villagers were against the operation of the company.
After much discussion among the non-governmental organisations, Eco Forestry Forum (EFF) chairman Ken Mondiai wrote to the Acting Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga about the alleged police action and demanded an investigation. Mr Kulunga did order a probe into the assaults and brutality. In response to Mr Kulunga’s directive, RH responded that it welcomed the investigation and furthermore hit out at EFF, claiming the NGO was anti-development.
RH and for that matter, logging companies, have always had this opinion of NGOs as being anti-development. We must say that RH and all have gotten it all totally wrong.
Eco Forestry Forum and its members are for development of the people - development that is fair and sustainable, development that is led by the people and the benefits stay with the people.
We know that EFF promotes development that takes into account the social, environmental and economic aspects of the people of PNG, who depend on the forest and surrounding environment for their survival.
We know that EFF promotes development that respects the rights of the people to express themselves freely. Development, we add here, must not be forced upon the people. People need to accept development and they must give consent or they must agree. Only then can development be called development.
Environmental NGOs and mostly EFF members, in particular are doing a lot of work that contributes immensely to the development of PNG which has often been unaccounted for. NGOs work in many of the remote areas of this country to build the capacity of the local people to make informed decisions that is beneficial to the development of PNG. NGOs have contributed to key policy developments through a number of boards that they represent, for example, the National Forest Board. NGOs also educate resource owners about their rights such as the impact of logging and other resource development on the ground.
The Eco-forestry and its members’ work is centered around several goals which are – (1) to care for the environment and better protect and manage PNG’s natural resources; (2) preserve the unique diversity of the forests and its full range of values and uses; (3) use the economic value of PNG’s forests and its products and services to generate income and develop infrastructure; (4) to promote human development; and to improve livelihoods and secure peoples long term future through ownership and decision making.
Our people want development that is carried out according to the laws of the land and in a transparent manner. We want to also make it clear that development is a broad term that is so often confused. It is our opinion that logging is not development, rather it is the process of cutting down trees. However , logging is development when the economic returns promote societal change in the communities that is beneficial, fair and respects the rights of the people.

Kapris fights for his Falcon Executive Club privileges: Who said the Casino and the PMIZ were elitist!!??

 
 
Go get 'em Gabriel. You're not going down without a battle, we know. Suddenly slipped off the Gravy Train, you scrambled back on right away and now you're barking down those silly populist competitors who dare to challenge your right to wear bespoke suits!! What can a teacher know about cutting deals with the Chinese, and amending MYOB software to move Chinese money into slot machines, and build Special Economic Zones of the future! That's what we call Minging Your Own Bisnis, man. F--k the little man! If he can't make way for the likes of you, he's not worth it anyway. 40,000 foreign jobs! Grab the skipjack and run---What will our kids need with tuna anyway? 

P.S. So glad to hear (below) that you've solved that landowner and environmental problem.  And righto, PAP's move to government was NOT a mistake---how else could you stop the freeze on your personal bank account?  

Kapris tells critic to run for election next year

Source: 

The National - Monday 10th October, 2011

MAPRIK MP Gabriel Kapris has called on public servants wishing to contest the next general election to resign from their jobs instead of issuing misleading media statements against politicians.
Kapris said this in response to Simon Kwingu, of Lae, who was critical of Kapris and his People’s Action Party’s move to join government and his involvement in controversial projects like the casino hotel in NCD and the PMIZ project in Madang.
Kapris said Kwingu was a teacher at the Balob Teachers College who had contested the Maprik seat in 2002 and lost.
“I challenge him to leave his comfort zone and return to Maprik and challenge me in the 2012 general election,” he said.
Kapris called on people who did not know about the marine industrial zone in Madang to shut up.
He said the PMIZ project had so much benefit compared to the LNG project.
He said the PMIZ would make the country the world’s major tuna exporter, create 40,000 jobs, help other maritime provinces and create many business opportunities.
“There are issues like landowner benefits and environment issues that the government is managing very well,” Kapris said.

Kapris said PAP’s move to government was not a mistake.
 

Lesson 1: Be Prepared (when you are paid enough to shame Cresus by the State of China to argue a case before the Supreme Court of PNG)

 
 
Below we describe one case of very important and over paid litigants finding themselves caught short in the pressure of a Supreme Court Appeal.

 (Images here are of stakeholders in court dress and traditional bilas)

I quote an unimpeachable source on the 4^th and 5^th Appeals in the Ramu Nicko case that just wrapped this week.  Clearly people in the heat of a trial are no less able to take notes than the rest of us watching from the sidelines.

 

 

We learn that:

 

The Appeal commenced on the morning of Tuesday 4^th October and the Bench was 10 minutes late. No penalty for them though – and it was two of the three judges who had penalised Tiffany last time. The Judges were Justice Davani (President), Justice Sawong and Justice Hartshorn.

 

These were the three Judges who sat on the earlier unsuccessful appeal by MCC against the first injunction – in July 2010. You will recall Davani and Sawong JJ decided in our favour and refused the Appeal – but Hartshorn found for MCC – so our side won by a 2/1 majority. Judge Hartshorn has been on every single one of the decisions in the past month on procedural matters – and he has found against the Plaintiffs every time. Hmmmmm....The day was started with an application by MCC to include some fresh evidence – that was the FINAL APPROVED Operational Environmental Monitoring Plan – it was the last admin approval needed by MCC before they are able to start dumping and it appears it was approved in early September 2011.

 

Tiffany consented to its inclusion as it was highly relevant. She then commenced the Appeal.

 

It was agreed that she would go first with the Appeal – against the refusal to grant the permanent injunction, then MCC at the State would respectively respond to our Appeal and then move their Cross Appeals against the factual findings of Cannings that there was likely serious environmental harm, that they were found in breach of Private and Public Nuisance and that their conduct was contrary to National Goal and Directive Principle no 4 - and that they were Not protected by their permit to dump as the permit did not authorise the extent of the damage that the Judge found.

 

She would then reply to their response to her Appeal and she would respond to their Cross Appeal.

 

Tiffany spoke on our appeal for about two hours – the Judges seemed to be following well aided by the written submissions in front of them and asked a few questions. It flowed well.

 

Scerri started just before lunch – but didn’t have his submissions finished – so he was making the judges work hard to concentrate – which they did not appreciate.  His submissions were actually against the factual findings by Cannings and so he was saying

1)  that their “experts” had said “x” and that there was no damage and in fact the overwhelming evidence was that there would be no damage – and

2)  that Cannings conducted a superficial overview of the evidence and gave scant reasons for his finding of serious environmental damage – and as Cannings was required by law to give reasons – this was an error of law that warranted overturning by the Supreme Court

3)  that our experts gave little evidence

4)  that his experts were experts and Cannings should have considered their evidence as superior

5)  that in any event – nothing below 100m has any interactions with humans, and that the bottom of the sea was like a moonscape.

 

This all involved hopping through the evidence and the decision – and without it written out in front of them – the Judges were finding this hard going and a lot confusing.

 

About mid afternoon Scerri finished, and Molloy addressed on the legal issues in response to our appeal – and again no submissions – so after about 20 mins Judge Sawong told Molloy it was very hard going.

 

Molloy made submissions on all our grounds of appeal.  He said to the Court also on the first ground that we had made up the common law principle that if nuisance was proven, the person injured was ENTITLED to an injunction, save only in special circumstances.  He was saying the law was the opposite – that just the normal law on injunctions applied.

 

(We later learned that Tiff was so pissed off by this – as she had provided ALL the case law and a chapter of a recognised text on nuisance – that when it came time to respond to Molloy –she also filed another page of submissions and also handed up another article that had recognised the principle – he was just LYING and she caught him out).

 

At the end of the first day, everyone at Twivey Co. felt that Tiff had put all they had wanted to put before the court on our appeal – and that they had arguments with which to respond the next day to the other side’s arguments. On Tuesday night Tiff finalised her submissions on the cross-appeal for the next day.

 

Molloy continued with his submissions on their grounds of appeal on Wednesday morning but this time they had their written submissions ready. He finished about 10.30am and Tanuvasa for the State started. He spent a long time trying to make submissions that customary landowners in PNG cannot have customary ownership or user rights over any part of the sea or sea bed or reefs – over any salt water at all. That it all belonged to the State.  WTF ?????  He said that to have standing in nuisance one had to have proprietary rights.  He then traced the meaning of “proprietary rights” in the English legal system back to the Magna fucking Carta and said that the customary landowners’ interests were not sufficient to be proprietary rights – so we couldn’t sue in nuisance.

 

HELLO ?????

 

Customary Landowners do not rely on English common law for their rights to land or sea or trees – they rely on CUSTON – PNG CUSTOM – which has as much force in law here as the English Common Law – well probably MORE.  All his submissions were so irrelevant it was embarrassing – obviously written by some Ausaid funded ECP consultant who hasn’t done the PNG customary law, land law or constitutional law exams to know the difference !!!!

 

He referred to the National Seas Act and said that as PNG had sovereignty over the territorial seas and the internal waters of PNG – the landowners could not have any proprietary rights over the sea.  Hello ???? PNG Govt has sovereignty over the whole of PNG but people still own land !!!!!

 

Worse for him, the Environment Act specifically recognises customary ownership and user rights and protects them – defines customary land and ownership and also recognises customary rights over water – and then defines water as not only rivers and streams but also internal waters and territorial sea.  

 

Sawong also asked if he had raised this in the lower court – or in the pleadings. He said he had no idea ‘cause a different lawyer was representing the state then !!! Tiff was then able to show the court that nowhere in the pleadings did they refer to this and indeed it was NOT raised in the National Court.

 

He also made submissions about the NGDP being non-justiciable. Molloy then said that the NGDPs were merely aspirational and unenforceable.  Oh god.

 

Tiff then replied to their response and also gave the team’s official response to their appeal –and went thru the evidence and showed where all the evidence of likely harm came from. She went thru the qualifications of the defendants “experts” and then thru ours – and showed why Cannings was right to have regarded our experts as experts and theirs as generalists.

 

And then it was over.

 

Onwards and upwards

 

And I now add the entry from our Court Scribe, Martyn Namarong, who always gets it right:

 

Parties disputing Ramu Mine Site to file injunction today

The NAMARONG REPORT

 http://medicmangi.blogspot.com/

If you’ve been brainwashed (like me for example) by the Churchies, you may recall the story of King Solomon and the two women who fought over a baby.

The story goes that two women who weren’t lesbians or perhaps they were, errr… where I was... Oh yes, two women had babies and they slept in the same room. One night, woman A rolled over and smothered her baby. She then picked up her dead baby and swapped it for the live baby. Anyway, next day em bikpela kros kirap na ol go lukim King Solomon long stretim!

The biological mum of the live baby stood before Solomon carrying the dead infant while woman A held the live baby. King Solomon em tingting igo.... and he said, “Bring the live child to me”. And the Child was handed over by woman A. King Solomon asked, “em pikinini blong husait?” And both women claimed ownership of the baby.

He picked up a sword and told the women that ‘em bai katim pikinini long half na serim wantaim tupela’. Now the evil woman A said ‘em wanbel’ while the biological mother said ‘maski larim em kisim bebi.’

King Solomon then gave the baby to its biological mother because he knew by the fact that she was willing to give up her baby to spare its life.

Moral of the Story: people who don’t own customary land are willing to exploit resources very easily at the expense of those who really own the land!

On the 14^th of September 2011, Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, published The National newspaper’s editorial (dated the same) that highlighted a threat from four so called landowner groups to close the mine if the MOA with the government wasn’t signed. The editorial read:

“However obscure these clans might have been in the past, they will create ripples on a national and international level in the not-too-distant future if they carry out their threat to stop the commissioning of Ramu Nico over what they claim are unsatisfactory benefits sharing agreements.

It is incumbent upon the government to prevent that from happening, not by strong arm tactics but by the simple, least costly and most effective way – talking.”

In those few lines of the editorial we can figure the motives of these four so called landowner groups: the Pagazi, Nokombi, Imurumba and Maure clans.

You see folks, the claim of customary ownership over land at Ramu Mine, by these four clans, is being challenged by around twenty other clans, in Court. So around the same time that the other clans file proceedings in Court, the four clans decided to up the ante to get the MOA reviewed and signed with the State. In other words, these four clans are keen on slicing the baby into pieces.

The State wants to negotiate with these four clans next Monday (17^th) regardless of the Court Proceedings instituted by the disputing parties.

Today the lawyer representing the disputing parties, yep you guess who, none other than Miss Twivvey, will make an urgent application to the Court to restrain the State and the four clans from negotiating the MOA.

 

Simply the Best

Fundraising for the PNC party last weekend included a glittering event at the RH Dynasty Restaurant at Vision City.

 Having been instructed to arrive promptly at 5.30, people clattered in on high heels and all manner of interpretations for black tie  (a remarkable feat in itself in a country with more secondhand than new clothes stores) while shoppers still lingered in the mall, and minions finished staplegunned bunting to the restaurant walls. An Australian duet with what must be the worst PR (billed on our programmes as having 'competent' voices) took the stage to provide the Simon and Garfunkle sounds familiar to hotel foyers everywhere, and lots of assistants in cheery yellow t shirts lined the peripheries, as major PNG players who wish to retain their status or acquire new construction and IT contracts slowly filled the 500 seats.

 
 Lovely Asian women with very high heels, very short skirts and very much makeup worked the room, as real PNG women with meri blouses and bilums were hugged and settled into their chairs. Even better was everything in between: if I live to see the day when a black tie event in PNG looks like one elsewhere in the world, then I will surely throw in my silly hat.

 

Wonderful Southern Highlands men in classic cornrolled scalps, others in Pacific formal shirts and sulus, and some in tight sports jackets and winched trousers from the back of their closets--and, not to be forgotten, at least one excellent example of what one PNG dignitary and myself coined as the territorial PNG 'bogan afrikaans' look---complete with mullet and bow tie and riding boots. 

 
 
 

Our new PM arrived in posse through the centre of the crowd (and for reasons of height could best be experienced as a ripple through the crowd) to the high volume strains of Tina Turner's Simply the Best!  Once he reached his front table, the song was immediately tuned down to silence.  But those who could not see him at the front table could find his doppelganger brother sitting elsewhere int he room.

 
 

But it was the first course that proved the most interesting choice (for RH or the organizers?). Just as the Marshall islands have launched their multi-kilometre shark sanctuary to prevent the kind of curel fin poaching that serves Asian palettes---we were presented with Shark Fin and Crabmeat Soup. Go figger.

 

Somehow the food all looked artifically coloured and glossy, arriving in strange sequence to the lazy susan just small enough on the table that everyone had to reach to fill their plates and spill red wine over good linen and dress shirts. And that was before everyone got sloppy. But the meal had been blessed by a Minister at the podium (no doubt to the dismay of our Islmaic and Buddhist guests), which might explain the otherworldly hunger we still had when everything was done and dusted.

 

 Our distinguished Deputy PM stood to present his PM, wearing a fresh military skullcap haircut, just as the first of two total blackouts swept the room. Thanks PNG Power. And as a surge returned us to the light Minister Namah joked about his otherworldly powers. The centrepiece of the presentations, however, had to be a short film called The Rise of Peter O'Neill, which was projected on the stage and then behind several tables in great flatscreen TVs, which occasionally made it look like the old Pangia shots of our teenaged PM had him sitting beside lovely Chinese couples keen to get aboard the adult O'Neill's gravy train.

 

 
 

 

Great shots of the PM's father, an Australian kiap in the Southern highlands, who was apparently a no-nonsense disciplinarian, according to Minister Fairweather who was interviewed in closeup (another freaky effect behind some tables) recounting a tale of being arrested by Kiap O'Neill when he was a young rogue and had driven a vehicle too fast along the highlands highway or something---only to be scolded in court, thrown in jail and given a K800 fine, as Fairweather said ("Which was a princely sum in those days"). It still is, of course, for everyone but those lucky enough to have paid the equivalent of a civil servant's severance package for a seat that night.

 

But the most fun was had by all at the Twivey Lawyers' table,  
where a succession of important men and women sauntered past to pay homage to (and burnish their own image with) this champion of  grassroots jurisprudence for PNG.

 
 
 
 

All in the interest of Change. Those we did not see at the event were, of course, Gabriel Kapris and Ben Semri and the Hole in the Budget Gang, who must have been stewing at Big Rooster as they planned their return to the gilded four-course inner circle. 

 

How far they had fallen... It was no surprise to some, then, that they raced to cross the floor only two days later-- to be received with open arms, even as the embrace soils the clean new reputations of  Sir Mek, Peter OM, B Namah crowd.

What's old is new again.

Happy Independence at Melton Grammer...jeez I love my kids

Nancy and Pauly have acquired gravitas, and specks in their eyes 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuna: Papua New Guinea’s Development Dilemma

Download Powerpoint tuna for spanish conference

Presented 13 September 2011 at the V Worldwide Tuna Conference in Vigo, Spain

"The future of the tuna industry in a global market"

(with powerpoint)

Nancy Sullivan

Director, Nancy Sullivan and Associates

 First I would like to say thank you to Senor Vieites, General Secretary of ANFACO-CECOPESCA and President of Eurothon, and all of you distinguished guests. I begin by apologizing for the absence of my comrades from the Department of Commerce and Industry in Papua New Guinea, none of whom were available to present for Orry Becker today, due to a change of government and a temporary vacuum in the department. Nevertheless, I will present a powerpoint created in 2009 by Mr Becker that describes the plans at that time for the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, although they are dated by 2011, and now, alas, outdated by recent governmental developments.

I am an anthropologist with 24 years’ experience in Papua New Guinea, also, despite appearances, married with children and grandchildren there, and a very committed PNG resident. My company, Nancy Sullivan and Associates, is comprised of Papua New Guinean ethnographers who conduct social assessments in development projects across a broad range of subjects in the country, and we have, over the past 8 years, conducted four surveys of the tuna processing conditions in PNG and the wider region, including Fiji and Kiribati. What I say here today should no way be taken as a criticism of our tuna industry in general, of which we are all avid supporters. It is a resource PNG needs to control more closely and harvest greater, more local development from. I will discuss this later.

 [Power point presentation]

 

 One addendum: Where are we now?

 Uneven development

 Papua New Guinea is the biggest contributor of tuna in the world. We learned this two weeks ago from Chairman of the Fisheries Industry Association and Executive Vice-president and managing director of RD Tuna Canners Ltd, Pete Celso, at the National Development Forum in Port Moresby.  In 2010 PNG supplied 720,000 metric tons of tuna, or about 70 per cent of the world’s tuna cuts. Celso said if PNG were to work closely with the other seven Pacific Island countries who were also Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), they could control 33 per cent of the world’s tuna supply. He said at the current price, which is about 1,600 to 1,700 US dollars per metric ton, PNG tuna cuts would be valued at 1.2 billion US dollars. “The question we should be asking ourselves is that, is PNG getting that value?” Mr Celso asked (PINA 2011).

 The answer to that, of course, is the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, which I have just described. My presentation here is but a caveat to these generalised ambitions on the PNG industry, and its efforts to become a Global Tuna Hub by transforming the PNA into an OPEC of tuna (see Pokajam 2011, Truk Pacifica Development Corp 2010). I am myself an anthropologist with 24 years’ experience in Papua New Guinea, married and settled in there, and directing a social science research company  with Papua New Guinean ethnographers. We have conducted several social assessments of the PNG tuna industry as well as one regional study of PNG, Fiji and Kiribati (Sullivan et al 2003, 2005, 2011; Sullivan and Ram-Bidesi 2008; Diffey 2007).

 

Papua New Guinea signed the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement was signed in July 2009 to provide a concession to the Pacific ACP countries allowing a derogation of the rules of origin for fisheries products (see Havice 2010; Havice and Campling 2009, 2010; Hamilton, Havice and Campling 2011; Tsamenyui et al 2008). The economic gains coveted by PNG are premised upon the derogation of the Rules of Origin, as you well know, and also upon upgraded management measures like the high seas pockets closure, controls on Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs), 100% coverage of purse seiners with observers, and the IEU Partnership Agreement.

Global sourcing is the linchpin of the new PMIZ (see European Union 2010). To some, however, it is an erosion of the sustainability of the tuna resource guaranteed by Rules of Origin by facilitating the use of raw material from any country’s vessels, and opening the door to greater IUU fishing (see Banks 2011). At very least, and everyone would agree, these FSM licenses being acquired by foreign investors, which stipulate domestic investment, are and must be linked to conservation and compliance by the National Fisheries Authority (cf. Pokajam 2011).. But the fish is only one resource at risk here. The other is the onshore community, the young female labour pool, and a form of humane appropriate development that is so important to Papua New Guinea. That is, we need to address the conservation of a unique quality of life enjoyed by most Papua New Guineans, and this requires greater attention to micro rather than macro economics. This is what the MSC and FOA as well as Susan Jackson and others yesterday refer to as the social pillar that for various reasons has remained poorly defined. Too often the formula leaves off at saying efficiencies along the value chain, better profits, more sustainable resources, all equal, ipso facto, a better quality of life in the home port. But it is an inadequate formulation, we would argue, for countries like PNG.

 
 

Real development in a country like PNG requires different priorities than, for example, in South America or Southeast Asia. The benefit PNG seeks to gain from foreign investment must not be restricted to the resource end of the supply chain. We face the challenge of providing appropriate development for these coastal communities involved in processing tuna. The difficulty will be in linking foreign investment to a local economy that is rural, predominantly non literate, and barely engaged in a cash economy. I refer not simply to the issues of corruption, which so often divert proceeds from the upper tiers of the system. But also about priorities, and it may be an RFMO concern first, but it is also a civil society concern, and a corporate social responsibility issue. Some would argue that it is a myth that conscientious consumers will monitor a supply chain, and only a hope that ILO signatories will be scrupulously monitored[1] (although I am happy to say that the ILO is in Papua New Guinea this very week).

 

The investors in PNG tuna generally restrict their local social responsibilities to providing some management training, offering security and transport contracts to landowners, as spin-offs, and resting on the 3000 total, to date, entry level jobs in production.

But if countries like PNG are going to leverage their access agreements, they must take seriously the mandates in these agreements to benefit local communities. The FSM licenses include the proviso of local development including the support of a domestic fishing industry.

 

It is a challenge that the National Fisheries as well as the Partners of the Nauru Agreement countries all need to address, and which they can do by collective bargaining for better working conditions, better wages, better institutional engagement for island people. The Maritime College capacity in these Pacific States is limited at present, and to expand the opportunities for training in health, sanitation and compliance more generally will take another generation. Timing is everything, though, and while income from foreign investments pays foreign consultants to monitor the tuna stocks, and salary the few Papua New Guineans working hard to police IUU, there are pressing needs for health, education, banking and community enterprise that can and should command the attention of all stakeholders.

 

 Women are cheap

What do these cannery/loinery jobs mean to Papua New Guineans? We currently have three processing plants, to Filipino and one American. There are plans for anywhere from 4 to 14 more.[2] The World Bank’s IFC is happy to see the prospect of thousands of jobs to be created in places where people are underemployed (Tabureguci 2011, Albaniel-Evara 2011, FIAS 2008). In effect, however, it is hard to know who will fill these positions. The majority of tuna plant workers everywhere are young women who loin or can on production lines for 8 and sometimes more hours a day (see Sullivan and Ram-Biudesi 2008, Diffey 2007, Demmke 2006). Often they are in trainee roles for as long as six weeks, allowing employers to temporarily bypass minimum wage (an amount that until recently was roughly 30 cents/hour, and is now more like 75 cents/hour). Production workers often have their safety gear, transport, union dues, and superannuation all deducted from a fortnightly pay packet, so that a fortnightly wage of  US $75 can be a take-home amount of $30, $40, $50. When we conducted our first study of RD Tuna in Madang, in 2003, we saw pay stubs for 80 hour’s work that were as small as $10, and one was even 1 Kina or 30 cents US. Depressingly, we have just completed a 2011 review of all 3 canneries and it looks like very little has changed (Sullivan et al 2011).

 

Keep in mind that PNG is not wholly engaged in the cash economy, and that these plants are built near or in towns where they attract women from rural villages or settler communities.[3]

Women in these villages---which are on customary land—have long subsisted by gardening and sales from local fishing groups, where even today they can get as much as K200/day from their efforts. We have tens of market studies conducted in Wewak, Madang and Lae (all tuna processing towns) that demonstrate how weekly market incomes are at least double that of cannery pays.

 

The need for cash is growing, but it is still a small minority of people who live exclusively on it, and the difference between having some and having plenty of money is painfully extreme.

A cannery woman typically brings home K24 per fortnight. Most of these women naively expect to enter a career path. Their pay packet, however, barely contributes to the household economy. It more likely goes to the toiletries, secondhand clothes, and transport costs of staying on the job. Their labour is lost to gardening, fishing or marketing for the household, which means that, in effect, they are a  drain rather than a boon to the family.  Despite this, and because so many rural communities have been sorely neglected by their elected officials, people line up to work at the canneries, to gain paid employment experience, and to begin what they believe to be a modern life.

As a result, however, the production turnover is extremely high. The savings in wage is said to be balanced by the inefficiency of the workforce. Women leave as quickly as they enter, creating a cycle of settlers willing to give it a go, who then walk out, and cannot return home. It is a Settlement Attraction Device in a sense.

 

This is what we wrote in 2003 of a Madang cannery:

Conditions in the Cannery are unhygienic and inhumane. Workers have no breaks, no clean or working toilets or showers, and labor under poor lighting and windless, hot conditions. Their sweat runs off onto the fish in the production area, and the spilled fish scraps are retrieved from a crumbling cement floor only to be lightly washed and processed. There are no provisions for gloves, hair nets, masks or gum boots, although these are available: in one of the meanest of Company policies, use of these basic sanitation and safety items are deducted from the workers pay. There have been documented cases of prostitution and gang rape of local women by Filipino nationals in both the Cannery and Wharf settings, as well as sales of illegally imported cigarettes and alcohol. No unions have been allowed until very recently… The wages are well below minimum national wage, and the hours unmonitored: most workers say they are forced to work over eight hours daily without overtime pay. There are also dubious practices of deducting NPF monies and Company transport fees from workers’ pay. (Sullivan et al 2003:121)

 

We must say that there are certainly many foreign workers, and company Directors, who respect their PNG colleagues and have excellent intentions in working here. But they are outnumbered, it would seem, by a majority of floor supervisors and vessel fishermen who prefer to treat members of the host community as second-class citizens. As one interviewee explained, albeit in exaggeration, “Management level in the RD Cannery is only for expatriates, locals, despite higher education qualifications, work as clerks and typists.”

The women in these communities are left in a double bind: with no way to sustain themselves, no fish of their own, no gardens to harvest, they sell themselves to fishermen to get fish, in a sinister relationship nicknamed ‘wan pis-wan koap’ (one fish, one fuck).

 

No one is coming to the ‘PNG Tuna Hub’ because they like the place, nor are they there for humanitarian reasons. They’re coming for EU access, and relatively cheap labour, the twin attractions of our small island State: neither of them stable or sustainable contingencies.

This is not a country with an industrial heritage (see Imbum and Ngangan 2001). It is largely uneducated, and in all these cannery sites entirely unprepared for the kind of exploitative labour relations endemic to the industry, and even more crucial to the so-called Special Economic Zones being planned (see Maringanti et al 2009, FIAS 2008). The social relations, landowner rights, economic disparities and environmental risks with these plans are enormous, and cannot be addressed by macro economics alone (see Ballinger 2011, Sassen 2011, Trumka 2011, Nopo 2011).. Nor is it appropriate to blame government corruption in developing nations for everything from a low skill base to costly infrastructure. The global frameworks of these Special Economic Zones, what makes them necessary and what makes them profitable, are the challenge for all stakeholders now.

 

Stripping the terms of FSM licenses down to unrestricted an uninhibited access to tuna will do nothing to solve the growing unrest of the landowner communities, the anger at inappropriate development, and the feeling of being neglected, ignored, and disrespected.

 

In defense of these plants who enjoy tax breaks, license waivers and an unlimited pool of unskilled labour, the public is assured that that cash is being injected into the local economies. However, lax immigration policies have exacerbated already difficult relations between Pacific Islanders and Asian migrants who tend to set up all the trade stores, and ship their profits offshore. Riots in the Solomons, in Vanuatu, in PNG and elsewhere reflect this tension on the ground.

Balancing costs and benefits

There is not enough time here to describe the life of a PNG woman and her importance to the household economy. In sum, she does much of the heavy load-bearing work in the highlands, most of the income-generating work in the coastal areas, and is now being asked to perform the tedious work of loining and canning in the tuna industry. RD Tuna and Frabelle have both had major strikes in the last year over their failure to comply with a minimum wage, with RD asking for special agricultural exemption from paying what are some of the lowest wages in the global tuna industry.

 

The insecurity of large scale investments and special economic zones are signalled by the recent amendments to the Environmental act in PNG which proscribes the rights of landowners to make claims against developers and waives the need for environmental reports.

It is the fragile skipjack stock that pulls in investors, and the endless stream of young unskilled women who secure the Chinese ExIm loans and World Bank guarantees. We have an ethical responsibility to see that these young women, born to heavily patriarchal societies, enjoy some of the benefits of this investment and can aspire to a middle class life for themselves.

 

There is no question that the National Fisheries Authority in Papua New Guinea has worked long and hard to raise its monitoring and enforcement capacity and they must be congratulated for their success. Compliance is coming to the fore in PNG, and that is good news for everyone.[4]

But we must separate rhetoric from reality and tackle the future needs of the country. The purpose of the specific provisions on rules of origin for fisheries products is to develop onshore fish processing capacity in the ACP Pacific states so as to generate local employment. But without the skills for most management and support roles, the bulk of the real jobs and virtually all the career paths will be granted to non-nationals. Education is always going to lag, and it may mean more than  a decade of social disruption from these imported labour pools before PNG can take the helm, and by this point the companies will have further entrenched non-nationals in most roles.

 

Where does regional integration and regional markets come in? Implementation of these EPAs must take into account ACP’s unique labour standards and training needs. Why is there no wiggle room on the one dimension?[5]

Landowners and local communities must become partners and not obstacles in this very important, very controversial vision of a Pacific Tuna Hub.

 

We have seen our mining industry detonated by renewed critiques of the growth at all costs agenda. Landowners having been considered liabilities for so long have finally had enough. Around the world,

“Environmentally, the new critique of growth argues that the price of gold cannot possibly make up for what the environment pays,” writes Melody Kemp in the Guardian. She goes on to explain that,  “Papua New Guinea’s minister for mines Byron Chan recently announced that he was changing the law to ,’hand ownership from the government to land owners’. Greg Anderson, of the Australian chamber of mines and petroleum, choked on his tie when asked to respond. Obstacles and community shareholders are clearly not his thing.”

 References

 Albaniel-Evara, Rosalyn 2011. IFC cannot shut project . The Papua New Guinea Post Courier online. http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20110819/mamose03.htm  19th August, 2011.

 Ballinger, Jeff. 2011. How Civil Society Can Help: Sweatshop Workers as Globalization’s Consequence. Harvard International Review, Summer.Pp. 54-59.

 Banks, Richard. 2011. Accompanying developing countries in complying with the Implementation of

Regulation 1005/2008 on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. Country Evaluation Report, Papua New Guinea EuropeAid /129609/C/SER/Multi.

 Demmke, Patricia Tuara. 2006. Gender issues in the Pacific Islands Tuna Industry. DEVFISH Project,

Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Secretariat of the Pacific Community

 Diffey, Simon (ed) 2007. DevFish Project Study on Gender Issues in Tuna Fisheries, Case Studies in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Kiribati, by Nancy Sullivan and Vina Ram-Bidesi, for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

 European Union, 2010, Global sourcing for 1604/1605 products: Papua New Guinea case study, Final Report FPA 22/RoO/10.

FIAS, 2008, Special Economic Zones: Performance, lessons learned and implications for zone development, The World Bank, Washington DC.

 Hamilton, A., Havice, E. and Campling, L. 2011.Update on fisheries subsidies discussions at the World Trade Organization. FFA Fisheries Trade News Vol 4: Issue 1 & 2, January-February 2011.

 Hamilton, A, Lewis A, McCoy M., Havice E, Campling L., 2011, Impacts of industry and market drivers on the global tuna supply chain, Honiara: Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency.

 Havice, Elizabeth 2010. The structure of tuna access agreements in the Western and Central Pacific

Ocean: Lessons for Vessel Day Scheme planning. Marine Policy 34 (2010) 979–987

 Havice, Elizabeth / Campling, Liam 2010: Shifting Tides in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean Tuna Fishery: The Political Economy of Regulation and Industry Responses, in: Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 10, Nr. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 89-114.

 Havice, Elizabeth / Campling, Liam 2009. Are Pacific Island States Losing Their Rights to Tuna Resources? Development Viewpoint  Number 43, December 2009  Centre for Development Policy and Research.

 Imbun, B. and K. Ngangan, 2001. The disclosure of information to trade unions in Papua New Guinea. Labour and Management in Development Journal, Vol 2 No 4, Canberra: ANU Press.pp.2-14.

Kempp, melody. 2011. Our demand for metals could cost us the Earth: For too long mining companies have used the mantra of growth to excuse environmental destruction. 1 September 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree-ethics-mining (accessed 3.9.11)

Kinch, J, M. Baine, A. Mungkaje, C. Dako, T. Bagi, M. Aranka. 2005. Moving Towards Management: An Analysis of the Socio-Economic Conditions and Catch Data of the European Union Rural Coastal Fisheries

Development Programme’s Fisher Groups, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. (August).

 Maringanti A, Sheppard E, Zhang J, 2009, "Where is the geography? World Bank's WDR 2009" Economic & Political Weekly 44 45-51.

 National Fisheries Authority, 2007, "Papua New Guinea's Plan for Tuna Industry Development -- A Brief Summary", National Fisheries Authority, Port Moresby.

 Ngoc Tran. Angie. 2011. The Vietnam Case: Workers versus the Global Supply Chain. Harvard International Review, Summer.Pp. 60-65.

 Nopo, Hugo. Pushing for Progress: Women, Work, and Gender Roles in Latin America. Harvard International Review, Summer.Pp. 78-83.

Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), 2011. PNG largest tuna supplier, By Online Editor
10:18 am GMT+12, 30/08/2011, Papua New Guinea. http://www.pina.com.fj/index.php?p=pacnews&m=read&o=10934029994e5c10517df7be3c8bc3 Accessed 3.9.11.

 Pokajam, Sylvester B., 2011, Papua New Guinea’s Approach to Sustainable Economic Tuna Management, Presented at Managing Fisheries for Sustainable and Equitable Benefits, Brussels, 2 May.

 Sassen. Saskia. 2011. An Emerging Global Market: Trends, Consequences, and Challenges. Harvard International Review, Summer.Pp. 48-53.

 Sullivan, N, T.Warr, J. Rainbubu, J.Kunoko, F. Akauna, M. Angasa and Y. Wenda. 2003. Tinpis Maror: A Social Impact Study of proposed RD Tuna Cannery at Vidar` Wharf, Madang. Unpublished report for Bismark-Ramu Group and Gadens Ridgeway Attorneys at Law. www.nancysullivan.net/reports.

 Sullivan N, Rainbubu J, Keleba K, Wenda Y, Dominic C. 2004. European Union Rural Coastal Fisheries Development Project Baseline Study, Follow-Up RRA For Madang. Special thanks to Sean Marriott, Jeff Kinch and Micah Aranka of the EU RCFDP. (September). www.nancysullivan.net/reports.

 

Sullivan N, Huaniangre M, Hukuku P, Nema Kia, Warr T, Wong M. 2005. Fishy Business, The Social Impact of South Seas Tuna Company in Wewak, ESP. East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. www.nancysullivan.net/reports.

 

 Sullivan, N., Warkia, N., Kee, Robin, and Lewis, A. 2011. A Social, Economic and Environmental Impact Assessment on the EU-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement, For Eurothon Comité Européen Interprofessionnel du Thon Tropical. Unpublished report.

 Sullivan, Nancy / Ram-Bidesi, Vina 2008: Gender Issues in Tuna Fisheries, Case Studies in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Kiribati, edited by Simon Diffey & Robert Gillett, DEVFISH-Project June 2008, FFA/SPC (pre-version from 2007 available on www.nancysullivan.net)

 Trumka, Richard L. 2011. A Global New Deal: Making Globalization Work for Labor. Harvard International Review, Summer.Pp. 42-46.

 Tsamenyi, M., Palma, M.A., Milligan, B. and Mfodwo, K. 2008. Development Impact of the Council Regulation Establishing a European Community System to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing on Commonwealth ACP Member Countries, prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Tubereguci, D. 2011.Business: IFC Allays Fears in PNG SEZ. Inslands Business

 

Truk Pacifica Development Corp., 2010. Feasibility Study: Pacific Marine Industrial Zone Project, (China Shenyang International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation)

 

---

[1] See Ballinger 2011:54-55: “here is one myth that has served the most vulnerable industries (electronics, toys, garments, and footwear) well over the last decade: a global brand will meticulously monitor its supply chain because conscientious consumers, informed by the latest technologies, will punish the company at the retail level for any transgression.” ---A point to keep in mind during this conference’s discussions of eco-labeling and consumer choice. Note also that PNG could learn from the Vietnamese case, where, in a socialist state, there is beginning to be some worker agency (see Ngoc Tran 2011); cf. Nopo on Latin American factory women.

[2] See Pokajam 2011:  

Company	Product Type	Output/Day (Target)MT	Employment		Status
			Direct	Indirect
Nambawan Sea Food, Lae	Cannery	150	2, 500	5,625	Construction November  2011
IFC, Lae	Cannery	150	2, 000	5,000	Full operational June 2011
Majestic Sea Food, Lae	Cannery/ Loin	350	6, 000	15,000	Construction start: Jan 2011 Completion: Dec 2011
Niugini Tuna, Madang	Cannery/ Loin	200	3, 000	7,500	Construction Start: May 2011
TOTAL		850	12,750	33, 125

 

[3] Indeed the European Union initiated a successful Rural Coastal Fisheries project across five provinces in PNG in 2005-6-7 where fishing groups were provided with boats, coolers and motors, and they were linked to private partners like RD Tuna who would buy those fish at market rates from them. The project folded, in the end, because there was not enough attention given to the unique conditions of a mixed-cash and subsistence economy in coastal PNG, where people commonly take off weeks at a time to harvest their gardens, and attend to traditional requirements. The loan payments were being required at the wrong times, and some of the private partners were finding their roles onerous. But the viability of these fishing groups was impressive (see Kinch et al 2005, Sullivan et al 2004).

 

[4] See Banks (2011:23): The PNG CC system is identified as being of very high quality with appropriate validation and verification procedures in place. There were some reports of problems with consignments entering the EU…the vessel stated was not on the EU SANCO accredited list. This problem has since been resolved. Both the NFA and the fishing industry have found adjusting to the CC reasonably easy, but this has largely been as a result of the industry’s own internal traceability systems, and good instruction and liaison provided by the NFA, supported by quarterly meetings to discuss problem issues.

[5] See, for example, the EU 2010:102 pie chart (from Infofish) below that refers labour and utilities as being only 11% of production costs for plants in Thailand, Ecuador and Seychelles (where, except for Thailand, labour costs are higher than PNG) Do freight, packaging and cans cost that much more in these locations to justify a rigid minimum wage in PNG? RD’s Management continues to seek a minimum wage exclusion from the PNG government on the basis of this argument.

Even without FADs, the by-catch from a PMIZ tuna 'hub' will be environmental and social devastation

Push-pull” effect may create first billion-dollar sustainable fishery

 

 

 

 

Environmentalists of all stripes are coming to the aid of Pacific islanders to save the last great stocks of tuna from the massive depletion that international fleets have wrought elsewhere.

The result is likely to be a major restructuring that could lead to the creation of the world’s first sustainable industrial fishery and be a boon for the nations that provide half of the world’s tinned tuna.

As a result of Greenpeace campaigns this summer, nearly all retailers in Britain, the world’s second-largest consumer of tuna, had committed to selling only those caught without a lethally efficient fishing gear called a Fish-Aggregating Device (FAD).

“The momentum is huge,” says senior Greenpeace campaigner Phil Kline. The Independent newspaper in London called the campaign “one of the most successful in years”.

FADs, as they are known, are floating platforms built in many shapes that are deployed by purse-seining ships and serve as a gathering point for vast numbers of ocean-going fish.

They are believed to be largely responsible for the decline in the stocks of the region’s two most tasty and valuable species—the bigeye and yellowfin, which are even more depleted in other oceans.

FADs also kill many more sharks, turtles and other marine life with no commercial value than do nets set around schools of tuna that are swimming freely (see box on page 19). Finally, FADs have helped grow the landed value of all tuna catches in the Western and Central Pacific to $4.6 billion for which the fleets receive $2.4 billion in subsidies, according to official figures.

Meanwhile, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which is based in London, is preparing to award its certificate of approval to FAD-free skipjack tuna—an abundant species ideal for canning—caught according to strict guidelines in free-swimming schools in the waters of the eight tuna-rich nations assembled in the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu).

 

Added marketability

Today, about 50 percent of PNA’s tinned skipjack or about 400,000 tons a year is caught without FADs, but in most cases, fish caught with or without FADs are not kept apart.

The added marketability the MSC logo provides is expected to motivate fishers to segregate the two catches from the purse-seiners’ holds to the tinneries, or even forsake them entirely.

“We expect the assessment process will be final by September at the latest,” says Bill Holden, MSC’s Pacific Fisheries Manager.

A recent study in Britain in the Journal of Agricultural Economics showed that another MSC fish, pollock, is sold for a 14% premium over non-MSC pollock, evidence that consumers are willing to pay extra for sustainable products.

With impeccable timing, the PNA countries, which have already limited the use of FADs in their waters to nine months this year and only six months next year, partnered with a Dutch company that has been selling sustainable tuna since 2007 to create the region’s own certificate of FAD-free skipjack: Pacifical.

The new product is designed to fill the expected surge in demand for ecologically caught tuna, notably from Britain.

Campaigners in Europe, Canada and the US say the increased future availability of FAD-free tuna will make it easier to persuade canners and retailers to shun FAD-caught tuna, as the British have pledged to do.

According to a study published this year by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, sharply reducing FADs use will allow the region’s mature population of bigeye, which is about 13% of what it would be without fisheries, to eventually triple. The bigeye, which can weigh 180 kg, is the most prized by sushi-lovers after the fast-disappearing bluefin, which lives in colder waters.

Increasing the population of bigeyes would increase the catch of adults caught with baited hooks and lines by fleets of long-liners, which set tens of kilometres of lines with baited hooks far from the shore, and pole-and-line users, which troll over schools of tuna feeding at the surface in coastal waters.

An average adult bigeye caught that way and destined for the grill or the sashimi platter brings $6/kg (or about $320 per fish, which average 60 kg) in port. A typical juvenile headed for a tin fetches only about $1.50/kg (or about $6 per fish, which average 4 kg).

So if FAD use is cut by 50 percent from today’s levels and fewer juveniles are caught by purse-seiners, the value of the whole fishery (using purse-seines, long-lines and pole and line) would increase by about $200 million per year, says Megan Bailey, a fisheries economist who is the principal author of the study.

Fisheries scientists from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community have been calling since 2008 for an immediate cut of 30 percent in the catch of bigeye, but so far the measures have only amounted to a cut of perhaps 10 percent.

The Canadian study found that halving FAD use would also allow the region’s mature population of bigeye to reach an ideal number. (Fishes will reproduce younger and grow faster when their numbers have been reduced to about 40% of the unfished population.

The yield decreases after that and usually collapses if the population falls below 10 percent of its original size).

Cutting the use of FADs, along with other measures such as the creation this year of a no-take area the size of India, is likely to be enough to make the PNA the world’s first sustainable industrial fishery, according to Bailey. “We have a unique set of push-pull effects here,” she says. “If it’s going to happen anywhere, it’s going to happen here.”

 

A Greenpeace success

The latest victory in the battle to save bigeye and yellowfin came this spring in Britain, when the Morrisons chain of supermarkets vowed to sell only FAD-free by the end of 2013.

The supermarket joined Tesco and Asda, which had made similar commitments in January. Princes, the leading brand, agreed in March to stop selling tuna caught by purse-seiners with FADs by 2014. When this edition went to press tuna brand John West UK, announced a shift to sustainable sourcing and lent its backing to Pacific marine reserves. Its actions mean the UK supermarket sector is the most sustainable worldwide on canned tuna.

They all were responding to a campaign that Greenpeace launched last year that involved writing letters (Princes got 80,000 of them, according to the organisation) and sending campaigners in shark costumes to picket supermarkets.

An initial campaign in 2008 called “Switch the Fish”, got retailers Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer’s and Waitrose to stock only tinned skipjack tuna caught with a hook and line.

The method requires the least subsidies and fuel and employs the most people in coastal communities. By-catch—fish caught unintentionally by the purse-seiners which includes young bigeye and yellowfin as well as turtles, sharks and skates —is virtually non-existent.

In addition, the fish themselves taste better because they haven’t been crushed in a huge net and brought in quickly. As a result, the fishermen get a better price for them, whether from canners or companies that fly them fresh to Britain.

Most of these three retailers’ tuna comes from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, whose government has never sold fishing rights to its waters to purse-seiners. Somali pirates lately have been keeping the purse-seiners away from the international waters outside the Maldives’ 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, according to press reports.

Early this year, Greenpeace returned to the fray with a goal of extending FAD-free tuna beyond those caught with hooks to include free-swimming schools netted by purse-seiners the old-fashioned way, without FADs.

“We’ve demonstrated to the world that consumers really want to save tuna,” says David Ritter, head of biodiversity at Greenpeace UK. “Within three years, we now expect that most of Britain’s tinned tuna will be FAD-free.”

In continental Europe, says Sari Tolvanen of Greenpeace in Amsterdam, “demand for FAD-free purse-seine tuna is also increasing”. The same trend is also true in New Zealand and Australia.

As the supply from the Maldives becomes insufficient to meet the growing demand, fisheries in the Western Pacific will be able to expand their markets into Europe if they reduce FADs and develop sustainable fisheries, she says.

Tolvanen notes that the fleets that rely the most on FADs—from Spain, France and the United States—are also the ones that have joined together in the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation to object to expanding the FAD-free catch in the Pacific. “We need to pressure the governments to end the use of wasteful FADs in purse-seine fisheries,” she says.

In the United States, Greenpeace campaigners are pondering whether they can replicate the achievements of their counterparts in the United Kingdom.

“The British public is a lot more informed about the issue than the American one,” says Casson Trenor, senior markets campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

“There are a lot of different issues involving creating sustainable seafood systems and reducing FADs in just one of them.”

In Canada, Greenpeace started a drive in May against Clover Leaf Seafoods, which has nearly half the market and which a study found sells young bigeye in mislabelled tins.

The campaign, says its coordinator Sarah King, has so far involved newspaper advertising handing out fake tins full of information on by-catch and even placing small magnets on tins in supermarkets.

“We intend to continue until they set a timeline to stop selling tuna caught by purse-seiners using FADs,” says King.

 

The PNA plan

Last year, after the PNA formally requested for MSC certification for its free-school skipjack, it invited the Dutch company Sustunable to set up a joint venture to market it.

Henk Brus, its owner, had been running a mid-sized tinned-tuna trading company called Atuna, known for its data-rich website, since the 1990s.

In 2007, he founded Sustunable to market FAD-free tuna. Working first with locally-owned Colombian and Ecuadorian fleets, he helped them market their products on the European continent.

In the past two years, he has done the same with fleets operating in PNG waters. Now a total of about 20 purse-seiners are supplying Sustunable, says Brus.

He created a unique feature for the brand: a number on the tin allows anyone who punches it on the retailer’s website to immediately obtain a wealth of information on where the tuna in that particular tin was fished, including pictures of the vessel and the captain. It also shows in which country and how it was processed.

“The idea is to create a direct relationship between the fisher and the consumer,” says Brus. So far, the service exists only in German (for instance, punch in R315440301 in the box labelled “tracking code” on the following page: http://www.edeka.de/thunfisch. A picture of a yellowfin, of the boat that fished it and its captain, as well as a wealth of other information, will appear.)

A similar number will be applied to the Pacifical logo. Both will be affixed to the top of the tin and combined with the MSC seal, separate from the actual retailers brand shown on the side of the tin. “We expect Pacifical to be selling in about 15 nations around the world by mid-2012,” says Brus.

The PNA project goes beyond sustainability to creating jobs: the brand will only be used for fish processed in a PNA country.

At the moment, while 700,000 tons of the 925,000 tons of tinned tuna caught in PNA waters yearly is loined or tinned in Thailand, only about 13 percent is processed in PNA countries.

According to Maurice Brownjohn, PNA’s commercial manager, Papua New Guinea has one loining plant and three canneries; the Solomons has one cannery and the Marshall Islands has one loining plant.

But under the PNA’s development plan, that capacity will double when a large plant in Lae, PNG’s largest port, is finished next year. In addition, several other smaller plants are also being planned in PNG and the Solomon Islands, says Brownjohn.

“Our goal is to increase the proportion of our fish being processed in PNA, rather than offshore, so that we increase our employment and the economic benefits from our fish.”

Wresting tinning and loining work from Thailand won’t be easy, says Brus, but PNG has a trump card: Thai tinned tuna must pay a 24% import tax to enter the EU market, but PNG’s tuna comes in duty-free.

“And PNG also has an advantage that no other country has: it tins export duty-free to Europe even tuna fished outside its waters by foreign vessels, as long as it is processed in PNG,” he says.

“That allows PNG tinners to expand their business and it’s a powerful incentive for fleets to unload their tuna closer to their fishing grounds” instead of Bangkok, 4,000 km away, now the region’s loining and tinning center.

While curbing the reliance on FADs will necessarily make the fishing vessels less efficient and raise the cost of skipjack, Brus noted that free-swimming skipjack are on average larger than those found around FADs, which attract young skipjacks as well as bigeye and yellowfin.

“A larger skipjack yields about 10% proportionately more meat, so it will sell for more,” he says.

Will the reduction in FAD use lead to a smaller skipjack take and thus smaller fishing fees paid by foreign fleets to PNA countries to fish in their waters—fees that in some cases represent over 20 percent of a country’s budget, as in Kiribati?

“The total skipjack catch might go down a bit,” says Brus, but not the fees. “The average purse seiner pays perhaps $3,000 a day in fees to catch 30 tons of tuna worth $57,000 at today’s prices,” he says.

“Even if the catch goes down, there’s no way the fee per day is going to go anywhere but up, given the increase in demand for FAD-free skipjack.”

 

Saving the stocks

However, if demand for FAD-free tuna keeps going up and the use of FADs goes down, it will eventually reduce the catch of skipjack, concludes Rashid Sumaila, an economist who heads the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia. But the catch of the more valuable adult bigeye and yellowfin would increase and their gain would exceed the losses on the much larger skipjack fishery, he found.

With no FADs at all, Sumaila projected, the Western and Central Pacific’s purse-seine industry would lose about $361 million a year because of a smaller skipjack harvest. On the other hand, the shallow-and deep-water hook and line fleets would gain $520 million, because many more young ones would reach adulthood and reproduce.

So if a single entity were managing all fishing methods in the region, the FAD reduction would make sense if the purse-seine fleet could be compensated for their losses. That would still leave a surplus of $160 million a year.

But no such authority exists today, says Sumaila. “The problem is that most long-liners don’t pay PNA countries any fees because they get their catch in international waters, while the purse-seiners do because they fish mostly in the waters of PNA countries,” he says.

“The use of FADs has to be reduced,” adds Sumaila, “but to be done in an equitable way, you have to create a cooperative management structure where the benefits that the long-liners will receive will be shared with purse-seiners who are making the sacrifice.”

He concedes that this has never been done. “It won’t be easy,” he says. “Given the current institutional setting, it appears the WCPFC (the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission) would be the one to set this up and they need to take responsibility.”

 

---

 

Tuna fads

 

Since man has been fishing from boats, it’s been known that fish tends to aggregate around an object like a log that is either floating at or not far below the surface, where it can grow algae that attracts herbivores.

Whether you’re spearing from a canoe or dropping a hook and line, your chances improve if you do it near, say, a log. If it’s not too deep, you can use chains and rocks to tether the object to the bottom, so it’s always there.

When purse-seiners expanded in the 1960s, they used two ways of spotting schools of tuna. One, when a so-called free or travelling school is feeding on a school of lesser fish like sardines or anchovies and driving them to the surface, they attract birds, which can be spotted from afar.

Smaller boats will drag lines through the area it’s called trolling, but purse-seiners will send a skiff to pull a net around the school, then pull it tight from below like a purse. Once the purse is closed, the mother ship comes over and hauls the whole school up with a crane, up to 100 tons of fish at a time.

The ones at the bottom are crushed, so the bruised meat is not fit for eating fresh or raw: it’s only good for the can.

The second traditional way of catching tuna is to spot birds that congregate around an object, like a log, a container that fell off a ship or an abandoned net.

There, the underwater community is much bigger: it is still dominated by skipjack, but there are many more sharks, rays and billfish.

In addition, many juvenile bigeye and yellowfin, perhaps a third of their mature size, rejoin the adult skipjack, which are their size. So when the net comes up around the log, particularly in the Central Pacific around Kiribati, perhaps a third of the catch can be juvenile bigeye and yellowfin.

These are sold separately but because their meat is darker, they fetch less than the skipjack in canneries. The Canadian Clover Leaf brand has been found to sell immature bigeye as skipjack.

In the 1970s, when industrial fishing took off, purse seiners started dropping overboard floating platforms called Fish Aggregating Devices with radio transmitters that made them easy to find.

So instead of criss-crossing the oceans looking for logs or schools, the purse-seiners can go from FAD to FAD, saving fuel and time. Between FADs, they still spot logs and free-swimming schools.

Finally, the more sophisticated fleets upgraded their FADs with sonars, which let them know precisely how much fish lay beneath each FAD. This makes them even more efficient by allowing them to indicate when the catch is going to be the biggest.

 

---

 

Mixed reactions to MSC move

 

Two years ago, the eight countries of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement approached the London-based Marine Stewardship Council to ask the council to certify its catch of skipjack tuna caught in either free-swimming schools or around logs, to the exclusion of tuna caught with Fish-Aggregating Devices (FADs), which kill relatively large numbers of young bigeye tuna, the world’s most valuable species of tuna after bluefin.

The idea was to create a price premium that would encourage fishers to forsake FADs, just as the PNA are limiting their use by foreign fleets to six months a year, creating what one scientist called a “push-pull effect” designed to stop the decline of the region’s bigeye population.

The amount of bigeye that could be sustainably caught today—about 30% less than what is actually caught—is half what was in 1970, at the dawn of the age of industrial purse-seining in the Pacific. If the population rebounds and the catch increases, the value of the fishery will increase by hundreds of millions of dollars, according to one study.

The council, which was created in 1997, now certifies over 7,000 seafood products, including several pole-and-line tuna fisheries. This marks the first time the council certifies an industrial purse-seine fishery.

Over the past two years, experts Moody’s examined existing data and determined that fishing skipjack caught around FADs and logs caused an unacceptable number of young bigeyes to die before they could reproduce. However, they found that nets placed around free-swimming schools of adult skipjack catch very few of these. So they agreed to certify the skipjack caught in free-swimming schools but not those taken around logs.

They determined that skipjack, the smallest and most fecund of the tuna, are able to reproduce fast enough so that the current stock is not threatened by purse-seining. And they found that PNA countries, by leveraging their contracts with the fleets that fish in their waters, have sufficient controls on the fishery to ensure skipjack caught in free-schools can be reliably segregated from those caught around floating objects until they are delivered to the canneries or to mother ships.

Because fishing with FADs is more profitable in the short-term, industry groups have strongly objected. Susan Jackson, president of the industry-supported International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, was scathing in a blogpost on the organisation’s website. “The fishery being certified simply doesn’t exist yet and is artificially defined by the PNA to mask problems that exist, which would otherwise rule out certification very clearly,” she wrote a year ago. “The assessors analysed a theoretical fishery, not an actual one.”

In another post this past June, she added, “There are concerns with even calling this a fishery as it’s defined in the PNA assessment. To us, it’s a bit contrived since vessels will continue to fish using both certified and non-certified methods during the same fishing trip.”

Albacora, a Spanish company that operates six purse seiners in the area including some of the largest in the world, issued a statement in which it noted, “On board purse-seine vessels, it is well known that all the catch is mixed,” whether it comes from FADs or not.

The company challenged the council’s conclusion that enough safeguards existed to prevent cheating. It also opposed the move on the grounds that “it would only be able to affect only 20% of the total catch of the species.”

—Christopher Pala

 

---

 

Is anyone listening to Rempi?

 
Sometimes it is hard to understand how landowners get so frustrated. How they feel so voiceless and easily dismissed. But then other times, as in the case of the grand mysterious Pacific Marine Industrial Zone project, the explanations are right out there in the open. There is Francis Gem being sniffed at by the Minister for Commerce and Industry as he shouts his objections to the project at a Rempi forum recently, followed by a scene of astonishingly bad form on the part of Sir Arnold Ahmet---such that he was forced to publicly apologize for racist remarks made to MP from Sumkar (the very District effected by the PMIZ) surrounding the latter's objections to the project. It is part of the standard process of foisting bad development on remote villagers that investments are made out of sight, in foreign locations, at the end of private jet junkets, and that these come to constitute the inevitability of a project against all constititonal and logical objections. Justice Cannings' ruling in the Ramu Niko case put exactly that message into words: The fact that so much money has been spent to date, on the presumption that a commenseurate amount of money will be made in the future (even when this is uncertain, and likely never to enrich the landowners anyway), means that no grassroots voices will be entertained. In fact, as we see from the item above in Friday's Post-Courier, the real objections to a major project---based on threats to livelihood, human rights concerns, environmental issues, among other  things---are too unwieldy to engage.

Instead, interlocutors tells us again and again that the landowners don't really object to the project (whether it be a special economic zone certain to destroy the fishing, the wellbeing of the communities, the food security, clean waters and health of the area or a nickel tailings disposal plan that will certainly cause human and maritime devastation)---they just want it done better.

Patronising?

Some of us who have attended multiple landowner meetings on the PMIZ have heard from local people already employed by the companies involved speak more openly to their brethren about this being their only chance at development, that we should all put up or shut up and stop complaining, and sneering at the more grassroots in attendance that they are just hankering for a better piece of the pie.

There is also a growing belief amongst well-fed bureaucrats whose children attend private schools and who do not live in the effected areas, that any and all challenges to the validity of a large scale project come from foreign instigators, insidious cabals of non-Papua New Guineans with global agendas who have clearly been able to persuade the masses against their better interests.

But this argument does not bear up in the face of the new digitial activism, and the growing field of indigenous NGOs dedicated to human rights, conservation, better governance and  self-reliance.

For example, the following document just arrived by email from the group Asples Lain Madang:

Here below is an English version of the advice from Chief Yamei Diwag of Dagenbag Clan, Baus Village, within the Sum Inland (Yabnid speaking) region of Madang province:

"I will be dying shortly, water is not like gold, nor copper or another mineral dug out from the belly of the ground. Water is forever, I am mindful of all of you my children here present and others not present, I am mindful also of my grand children, great grand children, and generations yet unborn, all of you and all of them will not have water, if you give it away to those people (company) who are urging you to give it away to them... Never give it away, because if you even think about or consider that offer by them (company), that is the beginning of your death and that of your children and generations after you." Chief Yamei Diwag, 20th August 2011

Should there be need for further information, please do contact the two people below:

Samuel Tuwol on 71627123
Lazarus Daimas (Caritas Madang) on 72862230

thnx
aspleslain Madang network

Sum Inland People Declare They Are No Party To The Controversial PMIZ Project

On the eve of an injunction suit levelled against the controversial Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) on 26^th August by plaintiffs representing their peoples in the project’s coastal and maritime impact area, the Sum Inland people, located just inland of the project’s immediate impact zone have declared again that they were no party to the project, nor did they have any intention whatsoever to do business with the project. Their strong stance was voiced out by practically all their leaders present at a meeting held at Guwildig village on Saturday 20^th August 2011.

 The villages of Guwildig, Sigu, Labdim, Venal, Abab, Barimfog, Baus, Bareoidig and a few more,

including Baiteta (which in fact is made up of settlers originally from those other villages above, who have migrated over during colonial times, mainly in search for social services), constitute the Emnam (speaking) tribe, located toward the eastern part of the Adelbert Range, Madang Province.

 In recent weeks the Sum Inland people and leaders have been troubled by visits from certain agents and/or middle persons, representing the PMIZ project. One such visitor, John Bundo, disclosed that there were definite plans underway to facilitate economic partnership between the Sum Inland people and the PMIZ project. That partnership was focused mainly on tapping into the water and forestry resources of the tribe to supply the project’s need for those resources. The project would need reliable supply of water and electricity as well as timber for building, construction and maintenance.

 
                                                                                                                                        

 Yamei Diwag, flanked by two grand children, is in his mid 80s, could be the oldest man alive within the Emnam speaking tribe. Yamei is chief of Dagenbag Clan of Baus village, and when he was allowed to speak his mind, toward the end of the 20^th August meeting, his two minute oration summed up his tribal leaders’ stance NEVER to accept the offer to do business with the PMIZ project.

Most of the Emnam speaking people (between 50 and 75 percent) live outside of their tribal lands. In 2008 the tribe initiated a move to encourage its members living in Baiteta, (inland of Rempi village), as well as Rempi, Talidig and Banab areas along the north Coast region of Madang, to move back up to their traditional lands. An association (Sum Inland Association) was formed for that purpose of mobilising their people to go back home, join up forces and see to their own development, the self reliant way. They have sought out and engaged an outside partner, Caritas Madang (within the social services office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Madang), to work with them on their self reliant focus to achieving their own development.  

 Numerous gorges such as the one in this picture above (middle), that allow fast flowing streams to run through, serve as natural land boundaries of clans within the tribe. Such streams feed into  natural reservoirs, four of which (Agilmayatag, Samahbululuh, Barohag and Gaunab) have been earmarked, without the tribal owners’ notice nor  consent,  for a water development project to feed the PMIZ project’s water and electricity needs.

Kayeyeh water fall, just below Guwildig village is one of quite a few such water falls within the region of the Emnam speaking Sum Inland people.

Deep Sea Tailings: When a Faustian Contract isn't worth the paper it's written on

The PNG National Court today made a decision of unprecedented symbolism. It’s hard to know why, but not hard to decipherwhat we’ve been offered.

Environmental disaster. In exchange for the billion-kina investment of a mine that will export all its earning back to China.

When a resource extraction project has invested enough money (in this case, K2.8 billion, we are told) in the effort, virtually no level of constitutional or moral insult can be felt.

In other words,

IF an investor plans to violate any of the National Goals of the country, goals which underpin the Constitution (like the Federalist Papers in the US) and define the unique sovereignty of the State, and

IF a project’s plan amounts to a breach of ‘our duty of trust for future generations’ as vested in the National Goals, and

IF the investor plans to commit irreparable harm to a resource which has international significance, above and beyond its national and local significance, and in the course of which will most probably pose a danger to the health of a population wider even than the immediate landowners, and

IF the investor has failed to disprove either possibilities in a court of law

It is still LEGAL for their project to go forward

IF they have invested an indeterminate sum ALREADY –- a sum that represents either overwhelming confidence in the outcome of the project, and/or the time spent under construction of the project BEFORE the plaintiffs have filed their suit.

In still other words,

With enough money, and enough impediments to raising  a case by remote villagers, anyone can destroy the environment of PNG.

In still other words,

PNG can and has sold it's soul to the Devil.

Given that in this case the impediments to bringing a case have included the very suspicious ‘flipping’ of the first set of plaintiffs, and the singular courage of the one remaining plaintiff---it is hard to find any judicial recourse for landowners from this judgement.

Justice Canning’s judgement spends 61 pages affirming the validity of the plaintiffs’ case, and the defects of the defendants’ case. In the last 3 pages it effectively does an about-face to conclude that the Deep Sea Tailings Plan is not in violation of the Environment Act, and that the preponderance of investment in the mine, and the potential expense to the Provincial and National Government were it to close, including the loss of investor confidence in the country, forces his hand.

This is particularly curious in light of his statement that:

"The defendants assert that if the DSTP is stopped the Ramu Nickel Project will be abandoned.  ‘If   DSTP is killed, the project will be killed’ was how counsel for the first defendant put it in his opening address. I see no credible evidence in support of that proposition. If a permanent injunction is granted in the terms sought by the plaintiffs MCC will be required to find an alternative method of tailings disposal, a land-based facility, which the evidence suggests would be a technically feasible option, though much more expensive than the DSTP."

 Furthermore, Cannings says,

“I cannot believe that MCC would just walk away from the project, having invested K2.9 billion in it to date, according to the evidence of their Acting Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Sun Yan.”

It is therefore the additional costs that he is considering, should MCC need to switch to a land based tailings system at this stage. In fact, it is the unspecified 'considerable' cost, and the likelihood that there would be economic ripple effects---also unspecified--that constitutes his decision:

“What I can believe, however, and make findings of fact on, is that a permanent injunction would lead to an extensive delay in commissioning of the project. The extra cost involved for MCC would be considerable. The multiplier effect on the provincial and nation al economy of commencement of a project of this magnitude, would be delayed. Investor confidence in PNG would be impaired.”

 Where is the hard evidence of these costs and the loss of investor confidence? In fact, Ms Nonggorr was the one to claim during the trial that a judgement in behalf of the plaintiffs would boost investor confidence in their investments by indicating that a robust judicial system stands to protect them in PNG.

But it is all too clear, by symbolism as well as word, that Ms. Nonggorr more than won her case.

 
 
 
Because, in the end, Twivey Lawyers are UNBEATABLE

Especially when they've got a chocolate fix (thanks Jordanna)

 
 and they bring a six pack from Hagen:

Hey--Who's that kid in the background?

Madang's Chamber of Commerce welcomes you to the leisure, retirement and industrial zone that is Future Madang

A Vision of Future Madang: Free from trees, tuna, fresh air and negative thoughts.

Today was the meeting of Madang’s Chamber of Commerce (aka ‘ We mean business, [and by that, we mean government business]’)

PNG Power’s Regional and local Directors opened a discussion about cutting down all the large tress in Madang. To clear space for power lines. Because trees are always a great threat to power lines, hence to progress, and it seems efficient to just do away with them all. Even the signature 200+ year old rain trees that adorn every postcard image of Madang are now, like the flying foxes, visiting low income workers, and of course our coral reefs, endemic fish, dive sites, tuna stocks and wide open spaces in general, present significant threats to the development of our new Madang Vision.

 
 

Ultimately it was decided that cherrypickers harvesting the offending branches would be a better solution, but not before the local PNG Power boss told a story about having  ripped up one grand old rain tree, leaving only its roots --which somehow flooded in a storm and toppled a series of power lines after all (a story we could only assume was meant to drive home the need to FULLY ERADICATE rather than partially cull the nuisance trees). But really: who needs shade when we're talking progress!

 

CoC President ( ex RD, and now representative from the CoC to the PMIZ Board) Stotick Kamya then gave us a cheerful progress report on the PMIZ and its initial scope of work. Included in it was an admission that money had run out last year for both the environmental and social impact assessments, which have still been left unpaid, and that all the settlers within the fenced area have been paid off but they are now asking for more (!!! Really---beggars must not be choosy!!).

 

 Some kerfuffle ensued when he suggested by misstatement that ALL Rempi people were settlers, which got the hairs up on one CoC member's back (who also queried the rumour that  the PMIZ is to have legally unprecendented private access banning landowners to waters offshore to 500 metres out from Rempi to Alexishafen---Stotick remained unsure).

 

 The wisdom of the project couldn’t be clearer when the Secretary, Graham Proud, asked for clarification, in front of the regional PNG Power boss, of how the project’s projected 16 kw load will be served by Madang’s power production when we are short 3 kw at present and only producing 5 mw when we require 8 mw. Our load is supposed to be 13, we were reminded--that is, for years CoC meetings have discussed the town’s unmet needs at 13 kw).

 Mr. Regional PNG Power offered us an excellent imitation of civil service double speak as he explained that the Ramu load would be soon ramped up to some crazy figure like 95 mw from the current 65 for the entire Mamose region, even if the lines from the Yonki dam are still precarious (and it only takes one downed pylon to blackout Madang)...without answering anyone’s questions.

  Then the presentation went on to include a discussion of the Gold Coast of PNG , a spectacular new development planned for up the north coast road, clearly piggybacking the town joy of a Pacific Marine Industrial Zone,  sponsored by Coral Seas and other private entities (land clearing has already begin!) ---where we can expect luxury villas, swimming pools, golf courses, malls, maybe even a Movie World and a ferris wheel modelled after the QLD version (whoopee!) ---and yet STILL no answers as to whether our gracious three bedroom condo over the 9^th hole will need gen sets and candles after all.

 

 It would seem that evicting landowners from these marvellous new retirement and industrial zones has not been a problem. Residents will be able to command spacious and landowner free vistas from the edge of their infinity pools.

 

 Did I mention Toady from the Wind in the Willows? He is a regular attendant to the CoC  meetings.

 

The meeting highlight came when the Provincial Administrator explained his problem evicting some of the squatters now occupying a town meeting hall on Coastwatchers Drive, once the old Madang Theatre, which had been mysteriously prised from the hands of its legitimate guardians into those of the highlander who happens to live behind the building, and whose acquisition of similar plum sites around town has raised questions regarding the integrity of the Lands Department here.  Not to mention the perpetrators of one of the worst crimes of violence against an esteemed private citizen in Madang town in the last few years.

 

So, after Mr Kamya claimed that the police would require a donation from the Chamber of Commerce to travel to Moresby and finish the paperwork for this case (eliciting loud scoffs and denials from members of the Chamber familiar with the case), the Provincial Administrator apologised for being unable to force the police to do its job, and explained that he couldn’t himself evict the squatters because ‘they have human rights after all’-----(apparently something the Rempi residents lack)

 

At least one major Madang business house tendered its resignation to the Chamber after today’s meeting.

 

 

 

The New Guiding Principles on Business and human rights endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council

 The UN has passed them now its signatory countries must be pressed to observe them: the basic human rights principles for business

 Link to the document itself below:

http://www.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/ruggie/ruggie-guiding-principles-21-mar-2011.pdf 



 

NASFUND and Deloittes announce: We pay for the scalps of whistleblowers!

REWARD FOR INFORMATION

 Please circulate widely through your network and contacts The NASFUND Board is aware of various articles posted on the blog site, PNG BLOGS and now being circulated via e mail which are factually incorrect, malicious in nature and defamatory. The articles are not only a serious attack on the integrity of the NASFUND Board and management it is a mischievous attempt to create confusion and instability amongst the contributors of NASFUND. The author of these articles has used the cloak of anonymity aided by the named website in perpetrating this cowardly and criminal smear campaign. An investigation to establish the identities of the persons involved is ongoing and a reward of K 50,000.00 is now offered for information leading to the identification, arrest and prosecution of both the author of the articles and the persons responsible for publishing it on this blog or any general media.

All information received shall be treated confidentially and should be forwarded to:

Ernie Gangloff Independent ex Officio NASFUND Board C/ Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Level 12 Deloitte P.O. Box 1275 Port Moresby Email: Egangloff@deloitte.com.pg

Authorized by: NASFUND BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Joint CEO, Rod Mitchell's Statement

I will preface this statement with the following quote from author Kevin Donnelly “Deciding between competing rights and balancing rights with responsibilities is difficult and challenging, no more than in relation to freedom of religion, expression and belief. As common sense suggests, not all rights are absolute and there are occasions when particular rights have to be qualified or curtailed. Freedom of expression does not give one the licence to shout “fire” in a crowed cinema” A number of issues in relation to allegations made on a blog site and reproduced in scurrilous form by email circulation through out PNG can be drawn from the above quotation.

1. That blogs far from being a democratic agent for change are now being used more and more as a tool for certain smear campaigns and agendas

2. In relation to allegations about me we can see that there is an agenda on a blog site to make any fanciful allegation without substantiation and use it to smear my character.

3. Nearly all the postings are written by the same person under different names. There also appears to be a racist overtone.

4. There should be an onus where people make unsubstantiated allegations that are designed to damage a persons reputation, for blog sites to not only state who they are, but also any article should be fully credited to the person who wrote it – not some glib “PNG Nationalist” etc

5. The whole approach on this blog goes against common law. What we have in these “blogs” is some Napoleonic approach of guilty until we say otherwise. And that also tells any thinking person of the hidden agenda at work here. Faceless people behind faceless, unsubstantiated muck raking. On this I note the claims of one anonymous writer who believes the mere mention of claims of defamation suggest identification with corruption.

Once again I state that no one begrudges fair comment. Malicious unsubstantiated allegations designed to hurt a person or company’s reputation is in a class of its own and the mere refuting of an allegation does not justify the malicious intent of the allegation in the first place. It is a shame that this particular website does not demand more accountability from those who comment and if it was a legitimate site you would expect a code of conduct regime in place – Not a policy of agenda driven anarchy. It is clear that over the last few months there has been a concerted attempt to destabilize NASFUND, the Board and it’s Management by malicious rubbish. The most successful financial organisation in Papua New Guinea will not stand by idly and allow faceless people to dictate or set their hidden agenda against the organisation. I ask the Members and the public to hold firm and co operate in exposing the people behind the website and those who wrote the malicious commentary. Let them have their day in court and let their allegations be tested in a legitimate forum. Rod Mitchell NASFUND This message was sent to nsullivan@online.net.pg from: NASFUND | 4 Mile, Boroko, NCD, Papua New Guinea | Port Moresby, NCD 111, Papua New Guinea Email Marketing by Manage Your Subscription